LIBRARY OF CONGRESS. 

Chap^Er Copyright No. 344$ 
Shelt..i.G 5* 



UNITED STATES OF AMERICA. 




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LIGHTS AND SHADOWS 



OF 



Mission ¥ork 



IN 



THE FAR EAST 



BEING THE RECORD OF OBSERVATIONS MADE DURING A 

VISIT TO THE SOUTHERN PRESBYTERIAN MISSIONS 

IN JAPAN, CHINA AND KOREA IN THE YEAR 1897. 



/ BY 

S. H. CHESTEE, D. D., 

Secretary of Foreign Missions in the Presbyterian Church 
in the United States. 



RICHMOND, VA.: 

The Presbyterian Committee of Publication. 



TWO COPIES RECEIVED, 

Library of Con£;r6S% 
Office o f t 

DEC 1 6 

Register of Copy 

49821 







COPYKIGHT 
BY 

JAMES K. HAZEN, Secretary of Publication* 
1899. 



Printed by 

Whittet & Shepperson, 

Richmond, Va. 



SECOND COPY, 






TO MY FRIEND, 

WILLIAM HENRY GRANT, 

WHose generous KiMdNess made tHe experiences 

Herein recorded possible; 

AND to THE 

MISSIONARIES IN CHINA, JAPAN AND KOREA, 

whose warmth of welcome 

MADE THEM ALTOGETHER DELIGHTFUL. 



PREFACE. 



In the autumn of 1897 the author made a 
visit to the missions of the Southern Presbyte- 
rian Church in Japan, China and Korea. The 
visit was too hurried to admit of very extensive 
taking of notes, and the plan was adopted of 
jotting down mnemonics that would serve to re- 
call such things as, on a first view of them, spe- 
cially interested him, and were in some way con- 
nected with the missionary problem and mis- 
sionary life. An account of these observations 
has been given in a series of addresses made in 
a few of our churches and church courts. The 
renewed interest in missions that has seemed to 
be awakened by these addresses where they were 
delivered, and the impossibility of reaching 
more than a small section of the church in that 
way, has led to the preparation of this little 
volume, which, it is hoped, may find its way into 
missionary libraries and homes in all parts of 
the church. 

Of the books which the author's happy ex- 
emption from sea-sickness enabled him to read 

5 



6 Preface. 

during the voyage, and found helpful in en- 
abling him to have a better understanding of 
some things which he saw, he would make spe- 
cial mention of "Problems of the Far East" by 
Hon. George IT. Curzon, which, while none too 
sympathetic in its references to the missionary 
work, is exceedingly happy in its descriptive 
chapters, and most thoughtful and just in its re- 
flections on the social and political conditions 
of the countries treated of. For a fuller and 
more adequate description of a Chinese city, 
especially, than that given in the text the reader 
is referred to the description of Peking in Mr. 
Curzon' s book, pp. 229-259. 

This book is given its local coloring from the 
fact that the author's visit was especially to the 
Southern Presbyterian Missions. But, as mis- 
sion work and mission problems are of largely 
the same character with all Protestant missions, 
it is believed that the matter the book contains 
will be found of general interest. If any dull 
hearts are stirred by it to more prayer and help- 
fulness in the mission work in his own or other 
churches, the author will be more than satisfied 
and amply repaid for his labors. 

Nashville, Tenn. 



COOTEOTS, 



CHAPTER I. Page. 

To the Far East, 9 

CHAPTER II. 
The Country and People of Japan, . . 15 

CHAPTER III. 

New Japan and Christian Missions, « . 28 

CHAPTER IV. 
The Country and People of China, . . 46 

CHAPTER V. 
The Missionary Problem and Work in China, 65 

CHAPTER VI. 

Hindrances and Results, . . . . 77 

CHAPTER VII. 
The Country and People of Korea, . . 91 

CHAPTER VIII. 
Mission Work in Korea, .... 114 



Mission Work in the 

Far East. 



CHAPTER L 

To the Far East. 

Those of my readers who may be medi- 
tating the possibility of a foreign tour will do 
well, before determining the direction of their 
travels, at least to consider the relative claims of 
Europe and Asia. The one advantage on the 
side of Europe, it seems to me, is the shortness 
of the time required for the journey. For the 
same length of time the expense of the Asiatic 
tour is far less. The things seen are more in- 
teresting because so utterly unlike what one has 
ever seen before. The flavor of immemorial an- 
tiquity and of associations connected with the 
inf ancv of our race lend an added charm. And 
one interested in the triumph of God's kingdom 
on earth will find in the Far East especially the 
place where the battle is now on which is to de- 
termine whether the gospel is stronger than the 

9 



10 Lights and Shadows of 

powers of evil intrenched in their most ancient 
strongholds. 

Looking at the matter from a more worldly 

and prosaic standpoint, it is doubtful whether, 

for purposes of absolute rest, human 

The voyage. x L 7 

experience furnishes anything quite 
equal to a voyage across the Pacific in the month 
of August. Our good ship is indeed a "lodge in 
a vast wilderness" of waters, where no rumor of 
business cares can reach us ; the sea is even mo- 
notonously placid, and we grow just weary 
enough of the "boundless contiguity" of sea and 
sky to experience the full effect of the vision of 
green hills and purple waters when the island 
oumewpos- of Oahu first greets us through the 
sessions. m0 rning mist. On this island is the 
city of Honolulu, the metropolis and seat of 
government of the Hawaiian group. Although 
it is within the tropics, the climate at Honolulu 
is so modified by a cold current from our north- 
western coast that the maximum temperature 
in summer is only 87° Fahrenheit. The mini- 
mum in winter is 55°. Whether viewed from 
the outside, or entered and explored, it presents 
us everywhere with views of enchanting loveli- 
ness. Looking down from the top of the Punch 
Bowl or the Pali, one might imagine himself, as 
Bayard Taylor says, "standing on the Delectable 




I 







HAWAIIAN FISHERMAN, 



Mission Work in the Far East. 11 

Mountains, with the valleys of the land of Beu- 
lah spread out before him." Standing in the 
valley and looking at the mountains shrouded in 
mist, and the gorges arched over with rainbows, 
the suggestion is of Bunyan's dream of the gates 
and towers of the Celestial City. Royal palms, 
cocoanut trees, spreading banyans, oleanders, 
the pomegranate, the orange, mimosas, banana 
groves, all manner of trailing vines, with flowers 
of every hue, are everywhere. All this flora has 
been imported, the soil of volcanic origin being 
originally devoid of such vegetation. But, once 
planted, it flourishes in the richest tropical luxu- 
riance. 

The physiognomy of the native strongly sug- 
gests the East Indian origin which tradition also 
ascribes to him. He has a fairly well-shaped 
head well set on broad, square shoulders, a large 
and muscular-looking physique, and an attrac- 
tive face. But he is lacking in toughness of 
fibre, his eyes are dull and his brain is pulpy. 
The women especially show an early inclination 
to obesity, for which they are only the more ad- 
mired. The first civilized dress introduced 
among them was the "Mother Hubbard" wrap- 
per, and to it they still almost universally ad- 
here. One good of it, considering the sudo- 
rific qualities of the climate, is that is does not 



12 Lights and Shadows of 

adhere much to them. In spite of their wealth 
of black hair and the beautiful flower wreaths 
worn on their hats, they do not achieve much in 
the way of picturesque appearance, except when 
riding a bicycle or on horseback astride. 

I expected to see an exhibition of barbaric 
splendor in the Government House where the 
representative of our government now sits in 
the chair of the ousted Queen. But it is simply 
a neat stucco building, with tasteful interior 
finishings, but nothing loud or gaudy about it. 
In the Bishop Museum one may still see the 
gorgeous feather cloaks once worn by the Kame- 
hamehas on occasions of state, the large circular 
wooden "calabashes," or trays, dug out and pol- 
ished to a wonderful smoothness by stone imple- 
ments, and the ropes, some with stains of blood 
still on them, once used in strangling human sac- 
rifices, and the large hooks once used to fish for 
sharks, with a piece of a Hawaiian for bait. But 
these now possess even for the native only an 
antiquarian interest. 

The Americans who have found a home in this 
"Paradise of the Pacific," about three thousand 
American i n nuniTbGr, have first civilized it, 
enterprise, then appropriated it, and then gener- 
ously donated it to their home government. 
Without raising the question of abstract right 



Mission Work iist the Far East. 13 

involved in these proceedings, it may be said 
that whatever was done that, from a theoretical 
standpoint, might seem high-handed, has the 
justification of having been done for the sake of 
self-preservation ; and it cannot be denied that 
the whole result has been beneficial to the na- 
tives. The introduction by the early navigators 
of civilized vices, diseases, rum and gunpowder 
reduced their numbers during the centurv from 
400,000 to about 40,000. But under the influ- 
ence of the schools, colleges and churches with 
which the islands are now covered, and of the 
orderly administration of government given 
them by the Americans, their numbers are now 
increasing again, and their condition is in every 
way unspeakably better that it ever was under 
their native rulers. What further will become 
of this interesting people as the wards of our 
nation remains for time to disclose. Let it be 
hoped that the public sentiment of the twentieth 
century w T ill tolerate nothing but justice and 
kindness in our dealings with them. Our brief 
glimpse of them and their lovely island home 
was only an episode of our journey to the Far 
East. Ten days more of quiet and restful sail- 
: g\g y with only an occasional grateful gale, just 
strong enough to clear the ship of the odors ris- 
ing from the Chinese steerage, brings us in sight 



14 Lights and Shadows of 

of land again. Presently our ship easts anchor 
in Yokohama Bay, and we hasten ashore to see 
the things new and old which the wonderful 
Sunrise Kingdom has to show us for our in- 
struction and delight. 



Mission Work in the Far East. 15 



CHAPTEE II. 

The Country and People of Japan. 

Many exaggerated ideas are abroad in regard 
to Japan, but one thing concerning which we 
Physical can scarcely have an exaggerated 
features. j(j ea {$ ^he physical beauty of the 
country. In sailing around the world one will 
pass in view of many goodly islands and charm- 
ing landscapes, but of none that surpass in 
beauty those that greet us in our passage through 
the Inland Sea. The vision of them, left behind, 
lingers with the traveller ever afterwards like 
memory of a lovely dream. And where, among 
mountains, shall we find the peer of Fuji, visible 
far out at sea, standing up like a sentinel to 
guard the coast, twelve thousand feet high, an 
almost perfect cone, and crowned with perpetual 
snow ? 

Of the total area of the country about two- 
thirds is occupied by mountains, not brown and 
bare like most of those we see in China and 
Korea, but covered with green foliage, or ter- 
raced and cultivated to the very top. Long 
avenues lined with the lofty and graceful crypto- 



16 Lights axd Shadows of 

meria lead back to picturesque little shrines, or 
to great and gorgeous temples, in dark shaded 
groves. The cherry blossoms in the spring, the 
azaleas in summer, the maple leaves in autumn, 
or the ice crystals on evergreen trees in winter, 
light up the glens and gorges with a perennial 
blaze of glory. Xo wonder the people love their 
beautiful islands with a devotion so intense that 
some esteem it to be even foolish, and call them 
"the land of the gods." 

But there is an element of terror also mingled 
with the beauty in the aspect of nature in Japan. 
Among these lovelv mountains there are hun- 
dreds of extinct volcanoes and about twentv that 
are still alive. The tradition of Fuji is that it 
was heaved up from the ocean in a single night 
about three thousand years a^o. and its historv 
is that one night, about three hundred years 
ago, the whole top of it blew off with a great ex- 
plosion, scattering broken rocks and lava far 
and wide and covering the streets of Tokio, sixty 
miles away, with ashes. In the autumn that 
most extensive and violent form of the cyclone, 
known as the "typhoon/' sweeps across both land 
and water, leaving wreck and ruin in its track. 
There is an average of one earthquake a day, 
some of them mere tremors, but others so violent 
as to reduce whole villages to ruins. Accorn- 



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Mission Work in the Far East. 17 

panying the earthquakes huge tidal waves some- 
times sweep over the coasts, in one of which, a 
few years ago, more than 30,000 lives were de- 
stroyed. The rivers which up in the moun- 
tains are little rivulets, playing and cascading 
over beautiful white rocks, are filled in the 
spring by the melting snows with floods that go 
raging down into the plains, sweeping away 
dikes and bridges and covering thousands of 
acres of prosperous farms with silt and gravel, 
character- The character of the people is 

istics. plainly marked by both of these fea- 

tures of their government, being a combination 
of tragic moodiness with a sort of playful £es- 
theticism. 

The aesthetic faculty is strong in all classes. 
The wealthy spare no pains or expense on their 
gardens of ornamental shrubbery and flowers. 
In the back yard of every house, important 
enough to have a back yard, flowers of many 
kinds, and especially the royal chrysanthemum, 
are cultivated in their highest perfection. The 
school boy's table is adorned with flowers, and 
the farmer returning from his day's work in 
the field will stop by the way to admire the 
beauty of a budding peach tree. In the spring 
when the cherries are in bloom they go out in 
great pic-nicking crowds to see and enjoy them. 



18 Lights and Shadows of 

On the other hand, in the summer, bands of pil- 
grims, dressed in their white mourning cos- 
tumes, go to the top of Fuji to worship there 
the gods of the storm and earthquake. Suicide 
is their refuge from trouble, about 7,000 a year 
being regarded as a conservative estimate of the 
number. The favorite method in the olden time 
among the soldier class was that known as liari- 
Jcari" (belly-cutting.) Before the weapons of 
modern warfare were introduced everv soldier 
wore two swords, a long one for his enemies and 
a short one for himself. When defeat or calam- 
ity overtook him he would sit on the floor of his 
hall with his friends around him and insert the 
short sword into his side and draw it across the 
abdomen, after which a friend would complete 
the operation of hari-kari by cutting off his head. 
This was indeed a "shuffling off" of the mortal 
coil, and reveals a strong element of the tragic 
in those who would choose that method of mak- 
ing their exit from the world. 

The Japanese present a commendable contrast 
with other Orientals in the matter of personal 
cleanliness. Rumor savs that, about the first of 
October, the average Chinaman takes his fare- 
well bath until the return of warm weather the 
following spring. But he is regarded as un- 
worthy of the name of a Japanese, whether he 



Mission Woek in the Far East. 19 

be nobleman or peasant, who does not bathe once 
a day in water just below the boiling point. The 
unpainted woodwork of their houses is all thor- 
oughly scrubbed once a year. Their floors are 
covered with beautiful white straw matting, 
always kept immaculately clean. To this end, 
on entering a house, all shoes must be left at the 
front door. This does not greatly incommode 
the native whose shoe is a wooden or straw san- 
dal that can be readilv shuffled off or on, but it 
tends to make life a burden to the foreigner with 
laced gaiters, and also to the development of end- 
less colds and catarrhs and influenzas. The 
only heating apparatus is the Hibachi, a small 
jar filled with pulverized ashes with a few 
lumps of live charcoal on top, by which one can 
warm his hands after a fashion, but which gives 
off more carbonic gas than heat to the atmos- 
phere of the room. Natives and missionaries 
keep their feet warm by sitting on the soles of 
them turned up behind. The transient travel- 
ler whose joints have not been educated to this 
posture must make the best he can of cold feet, 
unless he is able to effect a compromise with cus- 
tom, as I did, by means of a pair of crocheted 
over-slippers furnished me by one of the ladies 
of our mission. By the discreet use of these 
both the traveller's health and reputation for 



20 Lights aistd Shadows of 

politeness may in some measure be saved. Since 
the days of Abraham and Ephron the Hittite, 
at least, we know that dignity and politeness of 
demeanor have been characteristic of Orientals. 
But in these qualities also the Japanese stand 
pre-eminent. When a visitor enters a room 
they bow, usually three times, until the body and 
legs are at right angles. If sitting, they lean 
over three times until the forehead almost 
touches the floor. The use of multiplied hon- 
orifics and self-depreciations, and the constant 
iteration of deferential grunts and inhalations 
is a serious hindrance to rational conversation. 
This politeness is characteristic of all classes, 
and any common coolie among them would lay 
the courteousness of our "old time gentleman" 
entirelv in the shade. Thev are the Frenchmen 
of the East, and, like the Frenchmen of the 
West, very much of their overdone politeness is 
only surface deep. But on the whole they are 
to be commended for it, and one feels the con- 
trast painfully on coming immediately from 
Japan to America and coming in contact with 
the railroad manners of our great west. 

The people are almost dwarflshly small of 
stature, but have great power of physical endur- 
ance. I tested some of them — as well as my- 
self — thoroughly in that respect on an overland 



Mission Work in the Far East. 21 

journey from Kochi to Tokushima, a distance 
of 110 miles, which, in company with Rev. J. 
W. Moore and Rev. S. R. Hope, of the Southern 
Presbyterian Mission, I covered in two days. 
Our vehicle was the famous jin-rich-sha, a com- 
fortable little sulky pulled by a man instead of 
a horse. The name means literally "Pull-man- 
car." The way was over one of the old military 
roads found throughout the Empire, some of 
them said to date from the second century of 
our era ? and was graded for more than half the 
way through a mountain pass. It was about 
eighteen feet wide, the mountains rising sheer 
up on one side and a mountain torrent foaming 
over the rocks at the bottom of a precipice about 
one hundred feet deep on the other. An inci- 
dental discovery of the journey was that one of 
the many things the Japanese have no fear of 
is a precipice. Houses were built all along the 
edge of this one, with no barriers to keep the 
children from falling over, and no one manifest- 
ing any anxiety lest they should fall. Small 
children with other small children on their backs 
were frequently seen standing on its edge and 
peering over into its depths. In going around 
holes and ruts, in spite of our protestations, our 
men would go every time on the side of the preci- 
pice instead of on the side of the mountain. 



22 Lights and Shadows of 

They continued this perverse line of conduct in 
the same non-chalant and half-amused way even 
after Mr. Moore's vehicle had actually capsized 
and pitched him over the precipice, fortunately, 
however, at place where there was a ledge a 
short distance below the road that caught him. 
We travelled forty-five miles the first dav with 
no change of men and sixty-five miles the second 
day with three changes. The ricksha man in 
costume looks much like a college athlete equip- 
ped for the running match, is very proud of his 
muscle and speed, and always assumes a rapid 
and high-stepping gait when passing through a 
village. A eood one will easilv cover a distance 
of fifty miles on a good road in ten hours. What 
the Japanese lack in size they also make up in 
spirit and courage. The Chinese contemptu- 
ously call them "wojen" — island dwarfs. But 
as the Chinese have more than once found, to 
their sorrow, they have ever been a most unsat- 
isfactory people for enemies to encounter in war. 
Zinghis-Khan, with his Tartars, overran China, 
and his grandson, Kublai-Ivhan, thought to do 
the same thing with Japan, supposing, no doubt, 
that he would have quite a holiday time with the 
little islanders. The expedition, fitted out with 
much pomp and circumstance, reached the shores 
of Japan, but never landed. It would have re- 




1 






Mission Work in the Far East. 23 

turned much wiser than it came except that only 
three men of it survived to tell the tale. The 
war-like propensities of the Japanese seem to 
have been among their original and permanent 
traits and not a recent development. Each pro- 
vincial city has its ancient castle, the strong- 
hold of the old Daimio, who held fief of the 
Mikado to rule the province. A fine specimen 
of these is the one at Nagoya. It is built of huge 
blocks of stone, its two main towers being 170 
feet high and crowned with figures representing 
dolphins of enormous size and covered with 
beaten gold. It is surrounded by a moat that 
can be filled with water or emptied at pleasure. 
Its base is large enough to furnish storage room 
for several months supply of provisions, so that 
the old feudal lord, even though he might not be 
strong enough to come out and fight in the open, 
could look out from his observation tower and 
smile at all his foes. In the old days of fighting 
with swords the sword of the Samura had the 
temper of a razor, and the enemy who came 
within its sweep was almost sure to emerge 
from the encounter minus a head. From the 
earliest days of their recorded history to this 
day the soil of Japan has never been successfully 
invaded by a foreign enemy. They have now an 
army of about 250,000 men, including reserves, 



24 Lights axd Shadows of 

drilled and equipped after the latest models, 
and, except in the cavalry wing of it, hardly 
less formidable, man for man, than that of any 
western power. They have a navy that is second 
in fighting power only to that of England in the 
waters of the Far East. And in the light of 
present day developments one wonders some- 
times if we may not some day see them united 
with England and America in an invincible alii- 
ance for human freedom, not only in the Orient, 
but in the world. 

The old national religion of Japan is Shinto- 
ism — "the wav of the gods." It is a strange re- 
Morals and ligion with a strange name, inasmuch 
religion. as [ t takes no account of any gods, 
nor of morality in any form. Its moral postu- 
late is that obedience to the Emperor is the 
whole duty of man, and that, as for the rest, all 
a Japanese needs to be perfect is to follow the 
bent of his nature, which will alwavs lead him 
right. In later times it entered into a fusion 
with Confucianism, with which it had some 
things in common, the resultant combination 
being a sort of apotheosis of patriotism, loyalty 
and obedience to "the powers that be.' ? This is 
to a large extent the religion, or substitute for 
religion, of the upper and educated classes. 

Buddhism prevails among the masses, and is 




BUDDHA, NARA, JAPAN. 

Height, 53 feet; face, 16x9 feet; eye-brows, 5 feet; mouth, 2Y2 ^ eet - 
Five hundred pounds of gold, 16,000 pounds of tin, over 20,000 pounds 
of copper, besides iron, used in casting. Date, 1150 a. d. 



Mission Work in the Far East. 25 

more alive in Japan than it is even in India, the 
land of its birth. Nowhere else are the temples 
so numerous, so costly, so well kept, or so 
thronged with worshippers. Their gold candel- 
abra, their bronze filigree, their lacquered chests, 
their fretted ceilings of blue and gilt and red 
wrought in lotus flowers, butterflies and various 
mythical figures, all as fresh and clean as the 
day they were made, present a contrast indeed 
to the dingy old temples of China. The vitality 
of Buddhism, though probably somewhat dimin- 
ished of late years, is still everywhere in evi- 
dence. 

As to the general moral result there is much 
difference of opinion. Sir Edwin Arnold and 
Mr. Lafcadio Hearn are delighted with it. The 
national custom of promiscuous bathing and the 
general indifference of both sexes to the ex- 
posure of their persons is pointed to by some of 
their romantic admirers as a sign of their Edenic 
innocence. But the impartial observer may find 
himself forced to see in such things both a sign 
and a cause of the opposite condition. The 
census of 1895 reported an average of one di- 
vorce to every three marriages, and in every 
city the signs of legalized social immorality 
are most painfully abundant. In the foreign 
banks and business houses in the coast cities it 



26 Lights and Shadows of 

has been found necessary to employ Chinese in- 
stead of Japanese in positions of trust. Japa- 
nese trade will have a more permanent prosper- 
ity when their silk, which they sell by weight, 
is found on inspection to have less chalk in it, 
when a larger proportion of their matches will 
strike, and when the repudiation of contracts 
discovered to be unprofitable becomes less com- 
mon. Judged even by Oriental and heathen 
standards, it seems to me that the Japanese must 
be pronounced to be rather below than above 
par in the matter of every-day morals. On the 
other hand, their riddance of the curse of a pro- 
fessional official class, like the Mandarins of 
China and the Yangbans of Korea, their national 
pride and desire to appear well in the eyes of 
civilized nations, and the subjection of rulers to 
the criticism of an active and out-spoken public 
press have lifted them far above all other east- 
ern nations in their political morality. At pres- 
ent, by the operation of the revised treaties, they 
are just coming into the fraternity of civilized 
nations on terms of recognized equality. It 
will mean much for the welfare of other coun- 
tries in the Far East as well as for herself if 
Japan shall so deport herself in this new role as 
to justify the action of the powers in yielding 
her this recognition. The missionary body, who 



Mission Work in the Far East. 27 

constitute much the largest portion of her for- 
eign residents, will rejoice, for her sake as well 
as for their own, if she succeeds in doing so. It 
is they also who have done most in the past to 
make such recognition possible, and who will do 
most in the future to make her worthy of it. 
And it is a hopeful sign that this is now being 
acknowledged by some of her leading statesmen. 



28 Lights axd Shadows of 



CHAPTER III. 

New Japan and Christian Missions. 

The Japanese are intellectually bright and 
quick, with a consuming thirst for knowledge, 
especially of things that are supposed to be new. 
They have never been characterized by the false 
pride and conservatism that have well nigh pet- 
rified and mummified China, but have always 
been readv to examine new ideas, and to wel- 
come them if they seemed better than what they 
had, from whatever source thev might come. 
Thev readilv exchanged their old barbarism for 
the civilization of China when it was brought to 
them, and no more hesitate to acknowledge their 
obligations to Confucius than if he had been a 
native Japanese. So, when our western civiliza- 
tion was brought to them they had an open eye 
for its advantages, and, after a little preliminary 
dallying, made such a rush for it as has no paral- 
lel in the history of civilization. In thirty years 
time they have set up and put in full operation 
a system of parliamentary government under a 
written constitution. The Emperor, though 
still nominally absolute, rules practically through 
his cabinet and parliament, like the constitu- 



Mission Work ijst the Far East. 29 

tional sovereigns of Europe. Under the feudal 
system the old Daimios not only had the power 
of life and death themselves, but their retainers 
(the Samurai) were privileged to swish off the 
heads of the common people with their razor- 
like swords on the slightest provocation. These 
have now been required to step down and out, 
leaving justice to be administered by courts of 
law, under written codes framed on European 
models. A school system has been organized 
that ascends in regular gradation from the pri- 
mary school with compulsory attendance through 
the middle school, high school and college, and 
culminates in the great Imperial University at 
Tokyo, which receives an annual appropriation 
from the government of about $200,000. They 
have better postal and telegraph facilities than 
we have, and countless numbers of daily, weekly 
and monthly publications, the city of Tokyo 
alone having seventeen daily papers. The streets 
of the larger cities are fast being equipped with 
electric cars and lights. Nearly two thousand 
miles of railway are in operation, the great com- 
mercial centres from Tokyo to Kobe being con- 
nected by a line over which two through trains 
a day are run without change. So far as the ex- 
ternal features of our civilization therefore are 
concerned, Japan has them in abundance. 



30 Lights and Shadows of 

What then lacks she yet ? Much every way, 
and especially she lacks yet the infiltration of 
true civilization into the character of her people ; 
and she lacks the spirit of it which is Christi- 
anity. 

In the streets of Nagasaki I met a native gen- 
tleman dressed in a Derby hat, a steam laun- 
dered shirt and collar, a silk cravat, and over 
these a linen duster. The upper half of him was 
thus Christianly arrayed, but the lower half of 
him was not arrayed at all. He was a walking 
allegory. Japan is civilized at the top, but not 
at the bottom. Out in the country among the 
common people one sees many more relics of 
primitive savagery than among the Chinese, or 
even the Koreans. She is also civilized on the 
outside, but not yet on the inside to any great 
degree. And whether this external civilization 
of ours will in the long run do her more good 
than evil, depends on whether we shall succeed 
in our effort to give her along with it our Chris- 
tian religion, which alone can effect that regen- 
eration of character which can make Japan or 
any other nation truly civilized and great, 
christian Among the other Western things 

that Japan rushed at for a time was 
Christianity. When the feudal system was over- 
thrown the feudal retainers, who were soldiers, 



Mission Work in the Far East. 31 

scholars, and gentry all in one, found themselves 
in the new order of things without a reason of 
existence. Some of them went abroad and 
studied in foreign schools. Of these some be- 
came real Christians, and others, finding a con- 
venient mode of subsistence in lecturing in 
churches and practicing on the credulity of the 
Christian public, became Christians for the sake 
of the loaves and fishes. On their return they 
naturally became associated with the mission- 
aries from the countries they had visited, and 
found at once a sphere of usefulness and a means 
of livelihood as the missionaries' teachers, inter- 
preters, and helpers. They reported also to the 
men of their class that the civilization they so 
much admired was allied in the West with 
Christianity. Christianity thus gradually be- 
came popular with the Samurai. Meanwhile 
many of them had also turned politicians, and 
come to occupy positions of influence in the gov- 
ernment; and as churches grew and multiplied 
they were found to have a goodly number of 
lawyers, judges, and members of parliament on 
their rolls, and there was even some foolish talk 
of having Christianity adopted as the national 
religion. The churches and missionary boards 
were very naturally, but, as it seems to me, not 
very wisely or scripturally, elated, and much 



32 Lights ain t d Shadows of 

was made in missionary magazines of the fact 
that we had obtained a foothold among the "bet- 
ter classes" in Japan, and much was hoped from 
their influence for the rapid evangelization of 
the country. In twenty years from the time the 
first Protestant church was organized in Yoko- 
hama about 40,000 converts had been enrolled, 
the great majority of them being from this 
Samurai class. 

Just at this point a sudden and unexpected 

turning of the tide set in, and now for some 

years past our Protestant missions in 

A reaction. " x 

Japan, instead of marching on to 
swift and glorious victory, have found them- 
selves hard pressed to hold their own. Some 
writers express the opinion that this reaction 
has spent its force, and that we may now expect 
to see the native church enter on another period 
of rapid growth. I cannot see that the present 
situation has any such promise, nor do I think 
it desirable that we see any more "boom times' 7 
in the experience of our Japan missions. The 
prosperity of the early years was in many re- 
spects only seeming, and the present situation 
is the natural outcome of some things that were 
an element of that seeming prosperity. I think 
a partial explanation of the reaction is to be 
found in the following facts. 



Mission Work iist the Far East. 33 

First, the available material in the class which 
had been the special object of evangelistic effort 
was about exhausted. This class numbered only 
about 80,000 in the empire, and when 40,000 
of them had been enrolled as communing mem- 
bers in the churches we can readily see that there 
was not much field for further enlargement in 
that direction. If all of these had been Chris- 
tians after the type of Joseph Neesima they 
would have made an evangelistic force that 
would have been irresistible. But many of them 
had simply come in on the popular wave, and 
their motives were everything else but spiritual 
Many others, who were real Christians, were 
unfortified by any thorough instruction in Chris- 
tian doctrine and characterized by all the native 
instability and love of that which was new. 

Then, "while men slept, the enemy came and 
sowed tares among the wheat." Never was there 
a more striking illustration of this devil's strat- 
egy, and never was there a more fruitful soil for 
tares to grow in than in the minds of these nim- 
ble-witted, novelty-loving, vivacious, and vola- 
tile Japanese. Rationalists from this country 
and from Europe went over and made them be- 
lieve that they represented the new, the ad- 
vanced, the improved phases of Christian 
thought in the west, while the earlier mission- 



34 Lights and Shadows of 

aries, with their infallible Bible and their for- 
mulated creeds, represented only what was old 
and effete. The reason that these heresies, in- 
stead of merely weakening the church's spirit- 
ual power and checking its growth, did not work 
utter havoc and devastation with it, is because 
there was an element in it which had learned, in 
a genuine experience, and in the fires of persecu- 
tion, the divine power of God's inspired word 
and the preciousness of Christ's atoning blood. 
But this element was not strong enough to over- 
come all the reactionary tendencies, and did not 
itself wholly escape being affected by them. 

It was found also that the class spirit, which 
is a trouble everywhere, but is peculiarly strong 
in Oriental countries, began to assert itself and 
to make our church of the "better classes" less 
zealous than it should have been in carrying the 
gospel to those below them. To expect that this 
would be otherwise is more than the history of 
even regenerate human nature warrants us in 
expecting of it. 

And so the history of our Japan missions, 
looked at from the standpoint of the hopes once 
cherished of them, has been somewhat disap- 
pointing. 

There has been disappointment also in an- 
other direction from which much was once ex- 



Mission Woek ijst the Far East. 35 

Educational pected. The first missionaries who 
results. went out found themselves much re- 
stricted in the matter of residence and travel, 
and also in the privilege of openly preaching the 
gospel. But their services were in demand as 
teachers, and they took the lead in the new edu- 
cational movement, hoping that this would at 
least undermine the old idolatries and prepare 
the way for the gospel. If this movement had 
continued under missionary auspices it might 
have had this result, but meanwhile Japanese 
young men were going abroad to study in foreign 
schools. When they returned with their degrees 
they very naturally wished themselves to fill the 
places in their native schools, and in course of 
time, except for the purpose of teaching English, 
the foreign teachers were largely supplanted by 
them. Most of them came back mentally satu- 
rated with the views of Huxley and Spencer, or 
whatever they had come in contact with that 
claimed to be new in western science and philos- 
ophy. The whole government educational sys- 
tem is now under their control and has become, 
not only anti-Christian, but thoroughly materia- 
listic and atheistic. 

The following facts will show to what extent 
this kind of education has undermined the old 
idolatries. If it has done so with a few of the 



36 Lights and Shadows of 

higher classes, it does not seem, in their case, to 
have prepared the way for the gospel, but rather 
for something even worse than what they had 
before. The famous statesman, Count Ito, may 
be fairly taken to represent this class. He says, 
"I regard religion as quite unnecessary to a na- 
tion's life. Science is far above superstition, 
and what is any religion, Buddhism or Christi- 
anity, but superstition, and therefore a possible 
source of weakness to a nation." 

Among the masses the old idolatries, instead 
of disappearing, seem to be taking on new life 
and vigor, and are seeking now to extend and 
propagate themselves by methods they have 
learned from the missionaries. At Kobe, in 
company with Rev. H. B. Price, I attended a 
funeral conducted by two priests, one of whom 
was a woman, at which there was a gorgeous dis- 
play of flowers and much beating of drums and 
various spectacular accompaniments. In reply 
to Mr. Price's inquiry, we were told that the per- 
formers represented "a sect of Shinto, somewhat 
like the Salvation Army." At another place we 
saw some handsome western style stone build- 
ings which, we were told, were "a Buddhist 
Theological Seminary," where several hundred 
young men were being trained for the priest- 
hood. 



Mission Work in the Far East. 3? 

At Kioto there has just been completed the 
finest temple ever built in Japan, at a cost of 
about $2,000,000, which was all met by private 
contributions, chiefly of the common people. 
The great wooden pillars of the portico were 
reared by ropes woven of the hair of many thou- 
sands of women, the most precious thing they 
had to offer, devoted to the purpose. In the en- 
closure of another great temple we saw some 
very modern looking machinery at work, which 
we found was an electric light plant that was 
being used to furnish light to some carpenters 
who were repairing the roof of the temple. At 
Tokio I saw great crowds of people going out on 
electric cars over a road from which school 
houses, law courts, parliament houses, steam fac- 
tories, and all kinds of things belonging to west- 
ern civilization were in full view to the magnifi- 
cent and well-kept temples on the outskirts of 
the city, where they stood, some of them dressed 
in cut-away coats and Derby hats, and bowed 
and clapped their hands before the idols of 
bronze and stone. Some of them chewed wads 
of paper on which prayers were written and 
threw them at the idols. If the paper wad stuck, 
the prayer was supposed to be efficacious; if 
otherwise, it was offered in vain. 

So, as for beautiful and progressive Japan, 



38 Lights and Shadows of 

the old idolatries are still there; and a much 
more formidable enemy, educated atheism, is 
also there; and a Christian church is there 
which is in many respects other than we wish it 
might be; and this is the missionary problem 
that now confronts us in that most interesting 
country. 

And now the question is, what is to be done 
about it ? 

First of all, it seems to me, some useful les- 
sons lie on the surface of this history that greatly 
need to be learned, and vet which the church 
is very slow to learn. Our Master tells us that 
the missionary anointing he received was, first 
of all, "to preach the gospel to the poor." If the 
situation in Palestine in his day had been, as it 
was in the beginning of our Japan missions, that 
he had no access to the poor and did have access 
to the better classes, he would have preached the 
gospel to them. But we do not think he would 
have felt any elation at such a state of affairs, 
nor counted on any special advantage to his 
cause from their financial, social, political, or 
other forms of worldly influence. Through the 
whole course of Christian history whenever the 
church has leaned upon this broken reed its hand 
has always, sooner or later, been pierced. In 
building the church, as in building a house, the 



Mission Work in the Far East. 39 

best place to begin is at the bottom. As the 
building progresses the middle and the top will 
eventually also be reached. Therefore, if in 
China and Korea or elsewhere our first access 
is only to the poor and lowly, let us not be dis- 
couraged, but rather rejoice on that account, re- 
membering that "God hath chosen the weak 
things of the world to confound the things which 
are mighty; that no flesh should glory in his 
presence." 

Again, Japan furnishes a striking object les- 
son to show that they are mistaken who think 
that secular education and western material 
civilization, going in advance of the gospel in 
any of these old eastern countries, are in any 
sense a preparation for it. On the contrary, 
they leave the old barriers unremoved, and erect 
new and stronger ones in addition to the old for 
the gospel to overcome. It is too late now to ap- 
ply this lesson in Japan, but we may apply it 
in China and Korea. Our experience in Japan 
should teach the church that this is its day of 
opportunity in those countries, to go in and evan- 
gelize them first, so that when our science and 
civilization reach them, as they speedily will, 
they will come to Christian instead of to heathen 
peoples, and do them good instead of harm. 

Finally, as to Japan, it may be said that our 
mission history there has,_ in a certain sense, f ol- 



40 Lights and Shadows of 

lowed providential lines ; and, although the situ- 
ation as thus developed be a difficult one to deal 
with, the very last thing we ought to do is to be- 
come discouraged about it. There are some 
features in it that are full of encouragement and 
Encouraging cheer. While the church there at 
present contains a good deal of chaff 
and tares, it also contains many earnest, spirit- 
ual, and praying men, who, in the battle that is 
now fully on, will not be found wanting. And 
while it contains some native preachers who are 
not as sound and evangelical as they should be, 
there are also a goodly number who are aware 
of and mourn over the things that are wrong, 
and who are ready to be used for the new and 
different kind of work that is now waiting to be 
done. I heard one preach on the text, "I am 
come that they might have life," and the outline 
of the sermon as given me by Rev. R. E. McAl- 
pine, of our mission, differed from the sermon 
outline we often see published in our Monday 
morning papers as a piece of bread differs from 
a cake of sawdust. The points emphasized were : 
(1), The high aim of Christ towards men — to 
give them life — as contrasted with Confucius 
and other teachers. (2), The necessity of this 
life, men being spiritually dead. (3), The char- 
acter of it : it is spiritual, penetrating, and satu- 
rating the soul, working from within outwards 



Mission Work iis t the Fak East. 41 

in the life and character. (4), The spiritual ef- 
fects of it, illustrated by Christ's miracles of 
healing; set forth in his sermon on the mount, 
shown in the lives of his apostles; experienced 
by us in temptation, poverty, danger^ and perse- 
cution. (5), If we have this life, shall we self- 
ishly keep the joy of it to ourselves, or try to 
communicate it to our fellow-men ? 

I think it is inspiring to know 

Needs. . 

that we have native preachers in 
Japan who can preach sermons like that. The 
needs of the present time as they impressed 
themselves on me are, first, a large increase 
of the missionary force. The increase, how- 
ever, should be only of men able to deal with 
difficult problems in a wise way, and especially 
of men whose voices will always ring true on 
the Bible as an infallible rule of faith, and on 
the central truths of the old gospel. Then 
we need a native ministry trained by such mis- 
sionaries as these, in practical work as well as 
theology, and taken from the lower classes, so 
that they will naturally be in sympathy with 
them. And then we need to go out from the 
great cities where the few hundreds of thousands 
live, into all the small towns and villages where 
the 40,000,000 live, and preach the simple, old, 
orthodox gospel, until all the people have learned 
to know and understand what it is. This work; 



42 Lights and Shadows of 

will necessarily be slow and toilsome, largely 
hand to hand, and unattended by any brilliant 
and spectacular results. The true kingdom of 
God will no more come in Japan than it has ever 
done elsewhere "with observation." But if we 
will do the will of God in this matter, in faith 
and patience, then after we have done it we shall 
inherit the promise. Not by western science and 
education, nor by political or social influence, 
nor by any other human influence whatsoever, 
but only by the foolishness of preaching that 
gospel which is the wisdom and the power of 
God, will the old idolatries be finally over- 
thrown, and the idols be cast to the moles and 
the bats, and Japan become in deed and in truth 
a Christian nation. On the whole it seemed to 
me that the conditions that confront our mis- 
sionaries in Japan are more trying, and their 
work more difficult, than those of any of the 
fields I visited. They are standing in their lot 
bravely, cheerfully, and hopefully, asking of us 
only our sympathy, our prayers, and our earnest 
co-operation in their work. 

The native Christians also rightly look to us 
for the same thing. I had a visit from one of 
the elders of the church at Nagoya, a captain 
in the army, who came to talk over the situation, 
and to urge that we should not diminish, but 
that we should try to enlarge our work among 



Mission Work iist the Far East. 43 

them. He said we had prayed to God to give 
us churches in Japan, and in answer to our pray- 
ers he had given us many, most of which were 
still in the weakness of infancy. And now to 
abandon any of these churches and leave them to 
perish "would not/' it seemed to him, "be treat- 
ing God with proper politeness." So, speaking 
reverently, as Capt. Hibiti meant his expression, 
it seemed to me. 

What the church needs most of all is the wil- 
lingness to answer this touching appeal. And 
the day we ought to look and pray for is the day 
when it shall be said, God has made His people 
willing in the day of His poiver. 1 

1 Japan also needs a well endowed Christian school of 
a grade equal to the best government colleges, the pat- 
ronage of which would come from the graduates of the 
mission schools. Only from such a school can we hope 
to obtain the Christian leaders, both in the ministry and 
in secular life, that are necessary to the success of the 
work on any large scale. To guarantee that such a 
school would remain Christian and orthodox, for the 
present and for some time to come, both its endowment 
and its board of management should be retained in this 
country. If this course had been pursued with the Do- 
shisha, the present unhappy outcome of that enterprise 
would have been avoided. 

The remarks in this chapter concerning unwarranted 
and unrealized hopes from the effect of Western educa- 
tion and civilization are not intended to imply any de- 
preciation of the right kind of Christian education, 
which always has been and always will be found to be an 
essential part of successful missionary work. 



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46 Lights and Shadows of 



CHAPTEE IV. 

The Country and People of China. 

The essential difference between Chinese and 
Japanese native character is shown in the stolid 
and immovable opposition which China presents 
to the enlightenment and improvements that 
have been knocking at her gates for more than 
half a century from the nations of the West. 
There is method in China's madness, however, 
in this matter, for preserving as she has done, 
almost unchanged, the way of doing things in- 
augurated by the founder of her nation, who is 
claimed not without plausible reason to have 
been the grandson of Xoah, the transition to new 
ways which must come sooner or later will in- 
volve a revolution that can hardly be accom- 
plished without a violent disruption of the pres- 
ent social order. Meanwhile, those who would 
like to see what Oriental life was like at least as 
far back as the days of Abraham can do so by 
paying a visit to some of the interior cities and 
villages of the Celestial Empire. Excluding 
Manchuria and Thibet, China is about two- 
thirds as large as the United States, and posses- 



Mission Work in the Far East. 4? 

ses all the variety of geographical features, re- 
sources, soil, and climate that are found in the 
same extent of country in other parts of the 
world. In different parts of China differing 
environments have produced some variation of 
type among the people. But these are rather 
physical than intellectual and moral. In their 
characteristics, customs, and ways of looking at 
life we find among them throughout the empire 
a remarkable homogeneousness. 

The best part of China as respects both soil and 
people is the region of the Yangtse valley, in 
which the stations of our Southern Presbyterian 
Mission are located. If my reader will assist 
me by the vigorous use of his imagination, I will 
endeavor to show him some of the things to be 
seen in this region which constitute what may be 
called our Missionary Environment in China. 

For a view of the country we will take our 
stand on one of the high hills that are found at 
a rural frequent intervals along the river 

banks. From this view point the 
great valley spreads out before us northward as 
far as the eye can reach. The alluvial plain ly- 
ing between the Tangtse and the Hoang-ho on 
the north is the largest body of valley land to be 
found in one body anywhere in the world. It is 
dotted all over with villages, hundreds of them 



48 Lights and Shadows of 

being in plain view from our hilltop, their adobe 
houses reminding us, as we watch the yellow- 
skinned people coming out and going in, of a 
multitude of great yellow ant hills. Between 
the villages are the little farms of from one to 
three acres in extent, naturally fertile, and 
dressed with liquid fertilizer every afternoon 
until the air, even our hilltop, is laden with the 
perfume. In this way their productive power 
is preserved unimpaired age after age, and, al- 
though cultivated with the most archaic imple- 
ments, the same old wooden plow and pick that 
the grandson of Xoah used, and the fingers of 
the people, one would judge from the luxuriant 
growth and dark green color of the vegetation 
that thev are yielding; now their very maximum 
of food in the form of rice and beans and vege- 
tables. These farms are inclosed in a network 
of canals, which serve to irrigate the crops, and 
as highways of travel instead of roads; These 
canals are crowded with house boats and rice 
boats and foot boats and wood rafts and small 
junks, driven by sails or pulled by ropes or pro- 
pelled by a single crooked oar that works on a 
pivot at the stern, with a motion exactly like 
that of a fish's tail. They are crossed by fre- 
quent bridges of beautiful arched stone work, 
the best of them many hundreds of years old. 



Mission Work in the Far East. 49 

We see also a multitude of stone structures of 
two upright pieces with two transverse pieces at 
the top, more or less artistically carved and cover- 
ed with inscriptions. These are memorial arches 
of those who have given some extraordinary evi- 
dence of the virtue which the Chinese have exag- 
gerated into a vice, and which they call "filial 
piety" ; most of them in memory of young women 
whose betrothed husbands died, and who gave the 
supreme evidence of filial piety by leaving their 
own homes and devoting themselves to the ser- 
vice of the mother-in-law that was to have been, 
or, better still, by joining their betrothed in the 
spirit world through the door of suicide. 

Out in the rice fields and bean patches, and 
coming and going on the tow-paths, are the peo- 
ple, like the stars of heaven for multitude, not 
one in a thousand of whom has ever had a dream 
or an aspiration beyond that of three meals of 
rice a day, seasoned with a few vegetables and a 
little salt fish. They are hard featured, curi- 
ous, unsympathetic, and ungracious, and they 
flock to a foreigner, and close him in, if he comes 
anywhere in reach of them, like ants to a piece 
of bread. One of the least enticing phases of 
missionary life in China is that you can never 
get away from these people. They encompass 
you like a suffocating atmosphere, which one 



50 Lights and Shadows of 

feels at times to be intolerable, but can in no- 
wise escape from. The missionary can only for- 
tify himself against the nervous irritation it pro- 
duces by nursing visions of the time when, at 
the end of his eight years' term, he will be able 
to renew his vitality by breathing once more the 
air of his native woods and hills. In China he 
feels at times that one breath of these were worth 
a king's ransom. 

The hill on which we stand and all the sur- 
rounding hills are cemeteries, where grave 
mounds have been accumulating for four thou- 
sand years, until they lie as thick almost as they 
can lie, one against another ; and in the mulberry 
groves, on the canal banks, and on every rising 
ground in the fields are the heavy wooden coffins, 
holding the unburied bodies of those who died 
too poor to afford the luxury of interment, or 
who have been waiting for months, or perhaps 
years, for a rascally luck doctor, supported by 
the family, to find them a fortunate place for 
burial. It is a grewsome sight, indeed, and no 
one with a heart in him can witness it without 
being appalled at the thought of this innumer- 
able multitude, who, while the Christian church, 
which was commissioned to evangelize them, 
and whose first reason of existence has been to 
carry out that commission, has been apparently 



Mission Work in the Far East. 51 

going on the theory that this was a side issue, a 
kind of optional duty, or no duty at all, have 
now gone forever beyond the reach of evangeliza- 
tion. But whoever may have been responsible 
for these, for those living multitudes, working in 
those rice fields and coming and going on those 
tow-paths, the church of to-day that lives con- 
temporary with them is responsible. And if we 
fail to do what we can to give them the gospel 
which others have given to us, they also shall 
die in their sins, but their blood will be required 
at our hands. 

Another important feature of the environ- 
ment of a missionary in China is the city in 
a Chinese which he lives. It is an amazing rev- 
elation to one who sees it for the first 
time of the conditions in which it is possible for 
human beings to exist and thrive. The Chinese 

say, 

" Above is the palace of heaven ; 
Below are Hangchow and Soochow." 

Beautiful for situation is Hangchow, over- 
looked by rocky hills that duplicate themselves 
in the clear waters of the West Lake that lies 
between them and the city. But I enjoyed the 
privilege of seeing Hangchow in rainy weather, 
and tasted to the full "the myriad and assorted 
odors" that rise from its open air sewerage and 



52 Lights and Shadows of 

from the islands of garbage standing up out of 
pools of a saturated solution of house and 
kitchen refuse. The main street of the city at- 
tains the enormous width of ten feet, but the 
other streets have an average width of about 
seven feet. 

As one looks up the street the most obtrusive 
feature in the prospect is the long row of painted 
and gilded sign boards hanging perpendicularly 
in front of the shop doors on either side. The 
houses are usually two-storied, the upper stories 
being the homes of the people and the lower ones 
their shops and stores. Across from the upper 
windows, above the gilded sign boards, rope; are 
stretched, on which are hung blue cotton trou- 
sers and petticoats galore, for such an airing as 
the atmosphere of Hangchow affords. The fea- 
ture of "contrast" which Mr. Curzon declares 
to be "the dominant note of Asian individual- 
ity," is conspicuously exhibited in the interiors 
of the shops and stores. In one of them you will 
see displayed the finest and most richly-colored 
silks and satins and embroideries in the world. 
Next door you will see those same silks being 
woven by the untidiest of women on an old ram- 
shackle loom that creaks and threatens to fall 
down at every stroke of the batten. Next door 
to an ivory shop, filled with carvings of such 



Mission Work in the Far East. 53 

beauty and delicacy as only Chinese patience 
and deftness of finger can produce, stands an 
auction room for unwashed, second-hand cloth- 
ing, or old rags. Next door to this is a teashop, 
where a great crowd is gathered to gossip and 
smoke and gamble with dice and dominoes and 
fighting crickets, or, with endless chatter and 
gesticulation, to settle a half-dozen neighborhood 
quarrels at one time. Opium dens are appal- 
lingly frequent, half concealed, but revealing 
their presence by the emission of their sicken- 
ing odors. Entering the court of a Buddhist 
temple, once imposing with its massive timbers 
and the graduated ascent of its paved approaches, 
but looking old and dingy now, its glory long de- 
parted, we see a few irreverent worshippers per- 
forming before the idols, but a great crowd find- 
ing entertainment in the performances of the 
professional story-teller, the juggler, the ventril- 
oquist, or going into or coming out of the booths 
where every conceivable kind of humbug side- 
show is in full blast. If we stay there long we 
shall find ourselves the greatest side-show of all, 
and most inconveniently hustled by a crowd 
whose idea of the dignity of an American citizen 
is expressed by the greeting, "Where did you 
come from, you old red-bristled foreign devil ?" 
Out in the little narrow street are the thousands 



54 Lights akt> Shadows of 

and tens of thousands of the people, jamming 
and "jostling; each other in what seems 

Street life. J & 

to be, but is not, an impracticable ef- 
fort to get where they are going, and mingled in 
what seems to be, but is not, inextricable confu- 
sion. An embroidered sedan is loaded with a 
fat mandarin in silk robes and huge spectacles 
in tortoise-shell frames, his head bobbing to the 
motion of his carriers, portentous in his dignity, 
sublimely unconscious of his absurdity. A 
creaking wheel-barrow is loaded with three half- 
naked coolies on one side and three ugly black 
pigs on the other. The man with the bamboo 
pole across his shoulders transports by ropes sus- 
pended from either end of it every conceivable 
kind of burden; the traveller's luggage, boxes 
of merchandise, a movable restaurant, baskets 
of fresh cabbage and turnips, or of eggs that 
were once fresh, but, as likely as not, are now 
far gone in the process of transformation into 
sulphuretted hydrogen. Most pitiful of all to 
see are the women hobbling along on their poor 
little stumps of bound feet, many of them carry- 
ing in their arms, or strapped to their backs, 
from one to three very gaily-dressed, but very 
dirty-faced and mangy-headed children. Most 
forlorn and wretched looking, but most useful in 
their office of street scavengers, are the dogs, as 



Mission" Work in the Far East. 55 

bitterly anti-foreign as the literati, but whose 
superstitious fear of the foreigner is luckily 
stronger than their hate, so that as we pass 
along they first rush out with a furious bark and 
then immediately tuck tail and disappear behind 
the scenes. Seemingly impossible indeed the 
situation becomes when, in the midst of all this 
jam and jumble, a wedding procession going one 
way meets a funeral procession going the other. 
But in the long course of their experience the 
Chinese have wisely come to an understanding 
about some things, and one of these is as to who 
has the right of way in the street. And so, in- 
credible as it would seem, they all manage some- 
how to work their way along and, for anything 
we ever hear to the contrary, to reach their ap- 
pointed destinations. 

Another thing, of which we are likely to see 
several in the course of a morning, is a Chinese 
street quarrel, which differs from all other quar- 
rels as everything; Chinese differs from the 
same thing everywhere else in the world. "We 
observe two men walking side by side engaged 
in a conversation which grows more and more 
animated as they proceed. They are probably 
exchanging opinions as to which of their re- 
spective mothers w T as the most disreputable 
character in Chinese history. In the space of 



56 Lights and Shadows of 

half a mile thev have wrought themselves into a 
perfect frenzy of rage. Their voices have as- 
sumed a tone to vrhich the grating of a shovel 
on the hearth is music. Finally one of them 
gives utterance to a sentiment whose vileness of 
expression and comprehensive breadth of un- 
complimentary implication the other cannot 
hope to rival, whereupon the victor receives the 
plaudits of the crowd, and the vanquished, hav- 
ing "lost face," retires to grieve over his dis- 
comfiture. I was told that these quarrels rarely 
had any practical results beyond a little harm- 
less pulling of queues j but I saw with my own 
eyes three first-class fisticuffs grow out of them, 
from which both parties emerged with ugly knots 
on their heads, and after which I confess that 
my respect for the Chinese and my hopes for 
the future of their nation were both considerably 
enlarged. 

Last and most picturesque of all things to be 
seen in this unique street life is the professional 
beggar. He is a privileged character, belonging 
to a guild that protects his interests, for which 
protection he pays an initiation fee of thirty 
Mexican dollars. 

For an equipment, his face is covered with 
something worse than ordinary mud. His gray 
blouse, coming to the knees and frayed at the 



Mission Work in the Far East. 57 

edges, is stiff with that upon which he has been 
lying in the street. The part of his person ex- 
posed to view is a mass of festering sores. His 
plan of campaign is to promenade the street, 
stopping before each shop door, going through 
various contortions and singing a lugubrious 
tune, with the view of making himself so dis- 
agreeable that no customer will enter the shop 
while he stands there. When the reluctant shop- 
keeper at last capitulates by handing him out a 
cash, the beggar magnanimously raises the siege 
and moves on to the next shop. Over some shop 
doors you will see a piece of paper posted, with 
an inscription to the effect that a fee has been 
paid to the beggars' guild, in consideration of 
which that shop-keeper is to have immunity 
from their solicitations for the space of twelve 
months. 

Time fails to tell of the thousand other things 
that enter into this amazing and bewildering 
conglomerate of life in the streets of a Chinese 
city. It is intensely interesting to one who sees 
it for the first time and passes on to other scenes. 
But as a permanent feature of our missionary 
environment it has a tendency to grow monoto- 
nous, and to have the reverse of a tonic effect on 
missionary nerves. 

While the missionaries have their headquar- 



58 Lights and Shadows of 

ters in the cities, mose of the men, and some of 
the women, spend much of their time itinerating 
among the smaller towns and villages. There- 
fore the available modes of travel become an 
important feature of their environment. 

In Central China the canals take the place of 
roads, and the principal means of locomotion is 
Modes of the house boat. By carrying your 
own chair and bed and provisions, 
and something to read and a supply of penny- 
royal and insect powder, one can enjoy life fairly 
well on a house boat, provided he is not restless 
on the score of speed. A rice boat is a smaller 
but speedier craft, and is not to be recommended 
for a rainy night, such as the one Mr. Paxton 
and I had for our trip from Sinchang to Soo- 
chow, a distance of sixty miles, which we made 
in sixteen hours. Its covering is a piece of 
bamboo matting, open at both ends, and usually 
well supplied with holes, so that you can get full 
benefit of both the rain and wind. We asked 
the boatman if he had any bugs on board. He 
said, "Yes, a couple, but they are family bugs, 
and will not draw nigh you." "Any mosqui- 
toes?" Answer, "None, if you keep moving; 
but if you stop, one and a half." Our faith in 
his assurances was not great, but we did keep 
moving, and if either the two bugs or the one 



Mission Work in the Far East. 59 

and a half mosquitoes did draw nigh us, it was 
while we were asleep, and they did not succeed 
in waking us. 

But when a boat will not take you where you 
wish to go, then the problem of locomotion be- 
comes like that in the case of the Arkansas trav- 
eller, who was told, you remember, that which- 
ever way he went he would not go far before he 
would wish he had gone some other way. In 
the region from Tsingkiang-pu north they have 
the "mule litter" and the famous two-wheeled 
cart drawn by two mules tandem. Being pre- 
vented by want of time from visiting this part 
of our field, I did not have the opportunity of 
becoming acquainted by personal experience 
with these two phases of missionary life. But 
of the cart I was told that the wheels were usu- 
ally only partially encompassed by the tire, and 
that in combination with Chinese roads it is the 
most perfect device yet framed by man for dis- 
covering the exact location of every joint and 
bone in the human body. The wheel-barrow I 
had a very small experience of, but, small as it 
was, I have not since felt the slightest ambition 
to have it enlarged. The Chinese never lubri- 
cate their wheel-barrows, because, they say, 
"noise is cheaper than oil." You sit on the side 
of it, with one foot extended in front and the 



60 Lights and Shadows of 

other supported by a rope stirrup. To maintain 
one's position with dignity when the driver 
pushes you in his energetic way across a gully, 
requires the most rapid power of adjustment, 
as well as forethought and presence of mind. As 
a device for teaching one to appreciate the lux- 
ury of walking, the Chinese wheel-barrow is in- 
comparable. In all the Orient to-day, as in the 
days of Isaac and Jacob, the donkey is a favorite 
instrument of transportation. I rode one from 
Nankin five miles out to the Ming Tombs ; but 
going back I preferred to walk through the broil- 
ing sun. Nothing in China is exactly like what 
the same thing is anywhere else in the world. 
Whether it be man or animal, the power of 
heredity working through millenniums of isola- 
tion, with no modification from foreign admix- 
ture, has developed in every case something that 
is peculiar to China. The donkey is no excep- 
tion to this rule. His gait is a rough jog, in- 
stead of an easy amble. Our American donkey's 
bray, we know, is a unique phenomenon in the 
realm of sound. But that of the Chinese donkey 
has a quality all its own. It was that, even more 
than his gait, which distressed me and made me 
rather walk than ride him. There are no words 
in English to describe the heart-rendering pathos 
of it, It was as if an appeal to heaven against 



Mission Work in the Far East. 61 

the cruelty and oppression of ages were at last 
finding utterance in one long, loud, undulating 
wail. And when our party of three met another 
party of six and all nine of the donkeys began 
at one time to exchange the compliments of the 
day, one would not have been much astonished 
to see the dead coming out of those graves on 
the hillside, mistaking it for an announcement 
that the day of judgment had come. 

The Chinese inn I had experience of had its 
name inscribed over the door in a character 
which signified "House of excellent felicity." 
I have no doubt it was a truthful inscription 
from a Chinese standpoint, inasmuch as all 
their ideas of felicity, comfort, and convenience 
are exactly the reverse of ours. Its guest room 
had a door opening without a shutter, through 
which the multitudinous Chinese public were 
privileged to come in and inspect us and our be- 
longings to their hearts' content. It had a dirt 
floor, and its walls and roof were frescoed with 
dirt and cobwebs. It had one piece of furniture, 
in the shape of a platform in one corner, with a 
piece of ragged and dirty straw matting spread 
over it for a bed. Such as it was, Mr. Haden 
and I were tired enough to take a refreshing 
nap on it, and then went on our way rejoicing — 
to leave it behind 



62 Lights and Shadows of 

Missionary If Shakespeare could have visited 

homes. [ n some f the missionary homes in 
China, he would have had a new conception of 
a thing to describe as "shining like a good deed 
in a naughty world." It is the wise policy of 
most missions to build comfortable western-style 
houses for their members, and with the nice 
tableware and bric-a-brac ornaments that are to 
be had in the Orient for a trifle, it is easy with a 
small outlay to make a sweet and attractive 
home. Such homes all missionaries ought to 
have, if possible, to which they may go when 
their day's work is over and find rest from the 
nerve strain that one can see must be incident 
to work in such conditions as I have described. 
But it is not always possible to have such homes. 
In opening a new station it usually takes a year, 
or sometimes two and three years, of negotiating 
and battling with the authorities to buy a piece 
of ground. After that comes the experience of 
the leisureliness with which Oriental carpenters 
carry out a building contract. During this time 
the missionary, glad to get a foothold of any 
kind, contents himself with such accommoda- 
tions as he may be able to secure. I saw in the 
outskirts of Kiashing the little three-roomed 
mud hovel where Dr. Venable and Mr. Hudson 
spent one whole winter without kindling a flre ? 



Mission Work in the Far East. 63 

except under the dirt oven, because there was no- 
where else to kindle it In the spring Mrs. Ven- 
able joined them and lived there several months. 
Afterwards they moved into a five-roomed hovel, 
and finally into a native house in the city, where 
they are now, which has plenty of rooms, but 
the rooms are so small and dark and unventi- 
lated that they -cannot be made either sanitary or 
comfortable. At Wusih I found two missionary 
families living in ramshackle native houses 
fronting on a filthy street eight feet wide, with 
the rear windows hanging over a filthy canal. 

But, no matter what kind of exterior sur- 
roundings nor interior comforts or discomforts 
there might be, I found the inside of every mis- 
sionary home I visited to be a place of bright- 
ness and cheer. So far from complaining of 
their physical hardships are they that, as we 
know, when they come back to us, lest they 
might seem to be complaining, they shrink from 
even telling us the facts of the case. Neither are 
they unhappy on account of them. They are ab- 
sorbed and happy in their work. And it is evi- 
dently true with most of them that, by emptying 
their hearts of worldly ambitions and the care 
for worldly comforts, there has only been made 
the greater room in them for the blessings of 
that kingdom which "is not meat and drink, but 



64 Lights and Shadows of 

righteousness and peace and joy in the Holy 
Ghost/' One thing I think they crave to know 
of us who remain at home — that we cherish 
them in our hearts, that we remember them in 
our prayers, and that we are resolved to support 
them in the work which is ours as well as theirs, 
and yet is neither ours nor theirs — but Christ's. 
In closing this chapter let me say a word con- 
cerning the genuine and delightful spirit of 
brotherhood which I found prevailing among 
the missionaries of all denominations in China. 
The denominational lines existing here are re- 
produced there, as is inevitable. But breaches 
umty and of spiritual unity growing out of 

rcwnes e d these are rare - Presbyterians of all 
missions. branches co-operate in work to such 
an extent as makes them practically one. I can- 
not speak authoritatively of others in that re- 
spect, but I can say that I received everywhere 
the same welcome into the homes of the mission- 
aries of other churches as of those of my own, 
and the friendships formed with some of them 
I count among the most valued trophies brought 
back from my visit to the Far East. 



Mission Work in the Far East. 65 



CHAPTEK V. 

The Missionary Problem and Work in 
China. 

The mission of the church in China is not to 
civilize the Chinese. They have a civilization 
which is very different from ours, but which is 
very old and elaborate, and which, having been 
evolved contemporaneously with their national 
character, suits them in some respects better 
than our civilization ever will. Their ancestors 
were dressing in silks and living under estab- 
lished government and forms of social life ages 
before ours emerged from the forests of north- 
ern Europe, where they dressed in animal skins, 
ate raw meat for breakfast and roots and berries 
for dinner, and drank ale at their feasts out of 
cups made of the skulls of their enemies slain in 
battle. Our mission is not to introduce among 
them our western scientific knowledge and the 
material comforts and conveniences of our west- 
ern civilization. These will find their way to 
them in the course of time. But to the extent 
that they do so in advance of our gospel work, 
they will constitute an additional barrier in- 
stead of an advantage to that work. 



66 Lights and Shadows otf 

The church's business in China is to plant 
and establish the kingdom of God; and God's 
instrument for that purpose there and here and 
every where is the preaching of the gospel. 
Preaching In China, just as in this country, 

in chma. ^ e method of preaching needs to be 
adapted to the character of the audience. I at- 
tended a Sunday morning service at Hangchow, 
where our missionaries have been long enough 
to have gathered and trained a church of about 
150 members. A native woman trained at our 
Hangchow boarding school presided at the 
organ. The people sang, with such voices as na- 
ture had given them, some of our old church 
hymns translated into Chinese to the old fa- 
miliar tunes. The preacher was Mr. Dzen, a na- 
tive, trained by our mission and ordained as 
pastor of the church about three years ago. His 
text was, "Enoch walked with God ; and he was 
not, for God took him." The outline of the ser- 
mon, as given me by Rev. G. W. Painter, was, 
(1), The meaning of walking with God — con- 
stant communion. (2), The conditions — faith; 
love ; oneness of mind ; a common interest. (3), 
The results — we shall be afraid of sin ; we shall 
fear nothing else but sin ; we shall be with Him 
at the end and enter with Him into His glory. 
Though I understood not a word, yet my heart 



Mission Work ijst the Far East. 67 

burned within me as I saw in the faces of some 
of the listeners the radiance of the new life and 
hope which Christ had brought into their dark- 
ened souls; and I felt like saying as I looked 
over the little church with its plain wooden 
benches and uncarpeted aisles, "Surely the Lord 
is in this place ; this is none other but the house 
of God ; and this is the gate of heaven." 

To reach the outside heathen, other methods 
have to be employed. The "street chapel" is the 
chief reliance for this kind of work in the cities. 
A room is rented that opens on some frequented 
street and furnished with plain benches and a 
table and, sometimes, a cabinet organ. The mis- 
sionary and his native helper go to the chapel 
and take a stand where they can be seen by the 
passers-by. The sight of the foreigner or the 
sound of the organ brings in the crowd, and the 
missionary begins to talk to any who will listen. 
He has a hard problem before him. Not only 
are the ideas he would convey all new and 
strange to his hearers, but there are no words 
in their language by which they can be conveyed 
without endless explanations and circumlocu- 
tions. Their language, as well as their thought, 
is contaminated by centuries of association with 
idolatry. Their idea of God is of Shangti, 
whom only the Emperor can worship, and who 



68 Lights and Shadows of 

has no concern for the affairs of ordinary mor- 
tals, or of the god of wealth, or the god of war, 
or of Buddha, whose stone image, with its ex- 
pressions of idiotic self-complacency, intended 
to represent the peace of Xirvana, is the central 
figure in all their temples. Their ideas of truth 
and morals are all distorted and wrong. They 
know not what we mean by salvation. Some, as 
they come in, deposit their burdens and take out 
their pipes and smoke. Others express audibly 
their opinion of the "foreign devil," usually the 
reverse of complimentary. The expressions of 
countenance are various, but are mostly of sup- 
pressed rage or amused curiosity or hopeless 
stupidity. Into this unpromising soil the mis- 
sionary and his native helper throw broadcast 
the good seed of the kingdom. Occasionally one 
is seen whose face shows that he is wondering if 
the foreigner reallv knows of a God who is the 
friend of the poor and the oppressed and of him 
that hath no helper. This one will come again, 
and as he hears over and over again the story of 
Christ and of his love and power, some day he 
will learn the joy and peace of believing on him. 
This street-chapel preaching is followed up by 
conversations by the wayside with any they can 
get to listen to their message, and by the distri- 
bution of Bibles and Christian books and tracts. 



Mission Work in the Far East. 69 

And so the gospel seed is being sown beside all 
waters, and the foundations of the kingdom of 
God are being laid in faith and hope, and little 
companies of believers are being gathered here 
and there, and now, after long years of working 
and waiting, the sowers and the reapers are be- 
ginning to rejoice together. 

We are also trying to train up a generation of 
native preachers and workers, and for this pur- 
pose we have mission schools. Our Southern 
Educational Presbyterian Mission has always oc- 

work. cupied conservative ground on the 
question of schools as an evangelizing agency, 
and the work at most of our stations being com- 
paratively new, the demand for school work for 
the children of Christians has been limited. But 
many "Day Schools'' are conducted, where any 
children who will come and conform to the rules 
are taught, and where our lady missionaries go 
and teach them the Bible and the catechism and 
gospel songs, and then follow them into their 
homes. In this way they .carry the gospel to the 
Chinese women, many of whom could be reached 
in no other way. For the training of larger boys 
and theological students, other missions have es- 
tablished many large high schools and colleges. 
Our mission as yet has only an industrial boys' 
school, recently established at Sinchang. At 



70 Lights and Shadows of 

Hangchow we have a co-operative arrangement 
with our brethren of the Northern Presbyterian 
mission, by which we send our boys to their 
school and they send their girls to ours. Our 
girls' school at Hangchow has been in operation 
for thirty years, and now graduates each year 
a class who have had an eight years' course in 
which the Bible is the leading text-book. The 
good that is being accomplished by these gradu- 
ates in their work as Bible women and church 
workers, and as the makers of Christian homes, 
which are the greatest of all needs in China, is 
incalculable. This and other such schools also 
serve an indispensable purpose in furnishing 
our native pastors with educated Christian 
wives. By a happy coincidence one of the last 
year's graduates was married while I was at 
Hangchow to a young man who was about to be 
sent out several hundred miles into the interior 
as an evangelist. The ceremony, performed by 
the old native pastor, was interesting as an illus- 
tration of the thoroughness with which the Chi- 
nese Christians have been taught to do their 
work. It opened with a four-versed hymn to 
the tune to which we sing "The year of jubilee 
is come" ; then followed a long prayer ; then a 
reading of all the passages in the New Testa- 
ment bearing on matrimony ; then a twenty min- 



Mission Work m the Par East. 71 

utes' exhortation ; then the pledges ; then another 
hymn dealing very minutely with the subject of 
reciprocal duties; then another prayer, after 
which the services closed with the long metre 
doxology and the benediction. As they started 
out next day, leaving the little circle of Chris- 
tian friends they had been living among, which 
had grown large enough in Hangchow to en- 
courage each other under their trials, to take up 
their home and work in a community where 
they would only have each other to lean on, it 
was pathetic to think of the experiences that in- 
evitably awaited them. 

Let it be hoped that they have found in Him 
whom they serve all needed strength, and that 
their lives have been blessed by the mutual love 
which is known in Chinese wedded life only by 
those who have found it in their mutual love for 
Christ. 1 



1 Through the kindness of Miss E. C. Davidson and 
Rev. G. W. Painter we are able to give the following 
translation in verse of part of the wedding ceremony 
referred to above. 

Nature of Obligation as Told by Pastor. 
1. God has required the vows they take. The husband, 
though the head, 
Makes promise to revere the wife, nor other woman 
wed; 



72 Lights and Shadows of 

Medical The work of the Medical Mission- 

work. ar y i s "being much emphasized of late 

years in China as a means of removing the great 

Support and comfort with his love, he doth to her 

engage, 
When youth and beauty yield their place to ugliness 

and age. 

2. She too takes pledge that while he lives, her will to 

his shall bow, 
Or strong or weak, or rich or poor, she will not break 

her vow. 
Both promise make, should God see fit that one should 

widowed be, 
Their mutual offspring they'll protect, though to 

re-wed left free. 

Bridal Hymn. 

1. To show that unity of heart and virtues was God's 

plan, 
He made the woman from a rib, drawn from the side 

of man. 
In duties of the marriage state, there should be full 
* accord; 

Whilst mutual honor, trust, and help bring love as 

their reward. 

2. Assembled thus we all to-day in joyous mood unite, 
By public act to celebrate God's holy nuptial rite, 

In which this bridegroom and his bride, made one 

out of the twain, 
In body, mind, and will made one, one household shall 

maintain. 

3. Since they together from henceforth one path through 

life shall tread, 
May reverence, faith and mutual aid, by mutual love 
be fed. 



Mission Woek in the Far East. 73 

hindrance that exists in the hostility of the peo- 
ple to foreigners. Chinese education includes 
no knowledge of medicine or anatomy or sur- 
gery. Consequently they have no physicians 
of their own to relieve the manifold and pitiful 

May God the Father's constant help secure them last- 
ing peace; 

Whilst misery, woe, and carking care from them for- 
ever cease. 

4. O Heavenly Father! ever grant thine unremitting 

care ; 
May clashing discord never jar this God-united pair: 
We further crave thy guardian care for ages yet to 

come; 
May their descendants serve thee, Lord; nor to thy 

praise be dumb. 

5. May blessings from a Father's hand upon their home 

descend, 

And grace profound in man and wife in like propor- 
tions blend. 

Deep reverence for their Saviour-Lord, O Holy Ghost, 
inspire ! 

Whilst filial service all through life their single hearts 
shall fire. 

6. What things we crave, O Father dear! wilt not thou 

deign bestow? 
That man and wife — unsevered pair — to ripe old age 

may grow, 
Together bear the ills of life, together share its joy, 
And after death in heaven's bright halls together find 

employ. 
— Translated from the Chinese by the Rev. G. W. 
Painter. 



74 Lights and Shadows of 

forms of disease that spring from the conditions 
in which they live. In this case the work of the 
medical missionary answers in part the same 
purpose as the miracles of healing wrought by 
Christ and his apostles. Many large hospitals 
h^ve been established, which bear their constant 
and powerful witness to the beneficent character 
of Christianity, and become centres from which 
gospel light is distributed by those who have 
been taught, as well as healed, in them. 

Our mission has only one hospital, the one re- 
cently built at Soochow at a cost of $10,000, the 
gift of one man who chose the wise plan of giv- 
ing his money to this beneficence while he lived, 
and who now lives to see and enjoy the fruit of 
his Christian generosity. But we have eight 
medical missionaries working at our various sta- 
tions with such facilities as they can command, 
and who last year (1897) ministered to about 
40,000 patients. I spent a morning with Dr. 
Venable at Kiashing and saw the little room ten 
feet square with a dirt floor which he called his 
"hospital," in which he was treating a poor fel- 
low with a broken thigh, who already seemed to 
have the death pallor on his face, but who, by 
the blessing of God on the doctor's skill, came, 
through with a good recovery. Mrs. Venable 
and her sister, Miss Talbot, spent the morning 



Mission Wokk iist the Far East. 75 

in the dispensary, applying antiseptic ointments 
and bandages to all kinds of horrible sores and 
ulcers which the people contract from drinking 
their canal water, and from standing bare- 
legged in the rice fields ; and in dispensing medi- 
cines prescribed by the doctor. In addition to 
the regular prescriptions, every patient was fur- 
nished, for obvious purposes, a small jar of sul- 
phur and lard. Some of the cases they handled 
I scarcely had the nerve to look at. Yet they 
were doing their work cheerfully and happily, 
finding their compensation in the luxury of do- 
ing good. 

In serious surgical cases a written contract is 
made with the patient's family, in which they 
assume all responsibility for the result. It is 
often necessary also to perform the operation in 
public to prevent scandalous stories as to what 
barbarous things the barbarian doctor does with 
his patient. Even with these precautions it is 
often possible that a fatal result might lead to a 
riot. Dr. Worth told me that he once adminis- 
tered chloroform to a woman while a crowd of 
her friends stood by with an expression on their 
faces which plainly meant, "now, if she does not 
come back to life we will make short work with 
you." For a moment her pulse did stop beating 
and he thought his time had come, but, fortu- 



76 Lights and Shadows of 

nately, it returned again, and the operation was 
a brilliant success. Shortly afterwards another 
crowd brought him a dead woman and insisted 
that he should try to restore her to life. These 
are a few sample illustrations of the medical 
mission work. And God is blessing the noble 
and self-denying labors of our missionary doc- 
tors and of the women that assist them, so that 
through them thousands of bitter enemies are 
being turned into friends, and the doors are be- 
ing opened through which the missionary 
preacher can find his way to the ministry of 
souls. 



Mission Work in the Far East. 77 



CHAPTEK VI. 
Hindrances. 

Wherever the church has been established 
in the world it has had to meet and overcome 
many obstacles. But nowhere else in the world 
to-day do we encounter such a combination of 
obstacles as in China, growing out of the pecu- 
liar character, the peculiar institutions, and the 
peculiar superstitions of the people, 
character- Physically, the Chinese are very 

much superior to any other people in 
the Orient; and if not superior, they are cer- 
tainly not inferior intellectually. As between 
China and Japan, there was no dispute on that 
point so late as a half century ago. Up to that 
time all the civilization that Japan had had been 
derived from China; the Chinese sages, Con- 
fucius and Mencius, because she had none of her 
own, were her teachers in philosophy and mor- 
als, and the Chinese classics were the text-books 
in her schools. 

China is behind Japan to-day because her 
pride and conservatism have beaten back the 
impact of our western civilization, which Japan, 



78 Lights and Shadows of 

having been long accustomed to receive from 
others, has admitted and embraced. If these can 
be broken down and her students induced to ap- 
ply themselves to the acquisition of modern 
knowledge, it will not be long until their plod- 
ding industry will have placed them in the front 
rank among the scholars of the world. In social 
morality and reliability, they compare favorably 
with other Orientals, and though much addicted 
to lying, as all Orientals are, the difference be- 
tween them and some Americans in that respect 
is not greater than it should be, considering that 
China is heathen and America is supposed to be 
a Christian land. Many of their characteristic 
traits are those which, under the regenerating 
influence of Christianity, would go into the 
make-up of a great and noble people. They are 
sober-minded, industrious, enterprising, peace- 
able, and law-abiding. But they have two out- 
standing traits which, until they are greatly 
modified in some way, will prevent them from 
becoming a great and noble people, and cause 
them to be in the future as thev have been in 
the past, the most difficult of all people to reach 
with the gospel. These are their monumental 
and unparalleled conceit and their preposterous 
and paralyzing conservatism. If there is more 
hope of a fool than of one wise in his own con- 



Mission Work in the Far East. 79 

ceit, what hope is there of a nation of people 
who call their country "The Great, Pure King- 
dom/' "The Flowery Kingdom/' "The Celes- 
tial Empire" ; who look on themselves and all 
their belongings as absolutely perfect, and on 
the most refined and cultivated westerner that 
comes to them as a poor, ignorant barbarian 
from the far-off fringes of the world, worthy 
only of their enlightened scorn ? 

Their conservatism has its roots in their an- 
cestor worship, which leads them to resent any 
suggestion of improvement from any quarter as 
an insult to these ancestors. The way it works 
will appear from the following illustration : 

Old and New The first thin g tbat 0ne > g° in g 

shanghai. j f rom this direction, sees of China is 
the city of New Shanghai. It is a fine, modern 
city, with numerous factories, run by modern 
machinery and lighted by electricity. A wide 
boulevard on the river front is lined with a mag- 
nificent row of three and four-story business 
houses, of brick and stone. There are several 
squares of two and three-story brick flats for resi- 
dences, furnished with water and gas and all 
modern conveniences. There is one of the most 
beautiful of pleasure gardens, with its green 
turf and foliage plants and flowers and orna- 
mental trees, and red chairs and settees, where 



80 Lights and Shadows of 

the tired merchants come of evenings and sit and 
smoke, and drink in the fresh ocean breeze ; and 
graveled walks, where the young people prome- 
nade and tell their storv of love and adventure, 
to the accompaniment of moonlight and sweet 
music. 

One would suppose that all these desirable 
things of our western civilization, carried out 
there and put right before the eyes of the Chi- 
nese, would excite their admiration and awaken 
in them a desire to have the same things. Let 
us see. Passing through a gate in the wall that 
separates New Shanghai from Old Shanghai, 
we find ourselves in a typical Chinese city, said 
to make about the least pretension to decency 
and cleanliness of any city in the Empire. Ask 
the people of Old Shanghai if they would not 
like to have clean streets, and houses with grass 
plots around them, and marble-fronted stores 
and a pleasure garden. They answer, "No, our 
ancestors for thousands of years have dispensed 
with such things, and shall we set ourselves up 
as wiser and better than they ?" I was told that 
the municipality of New Shanghai did offer to 
extend its waterworks, free of charge, to Old 
Shanghai, in the hope of thereby preventing the 
pestilences that originate in the foulness of its 
streets and canals. They responded by sending 



Mission Work in the Far East. 81 

a committee to investigate the water that was 
offered them. The committee went back and re- 
ported that they did not like it. "It has no body 
to it," they said, "like the water of our canals. 
It has neither taste nor smell." Whether this 
story be true or apocryphal, it exactly illustrates 
the attitude of China, not only to clean water 
and western comforts and conveniences, but to 
the western man himself and every thing he 
brings with him, Christianity not excepted. 
National The process of national evolution 

evolution. ] ias ^^ a \ 0Il g time to work itself out 

in China along the lines projected by the an- 
cient fathers, and the result is as though the 
"God of this world" had been the presiding 
genius of it, and had been given unlimited op- 
portunity to do his worst in the way of making 
China hopelessly inaccessible to the gospel. 

In government there has been evolved a patri- 
archal despotism, in which "the beautiful senti- 
ment of filial piety" binds all the people to ab- 
ject and unquestioning submission to "the pow- 
ers that be," from the Emperor down to the 
father of the family, the elder brother and the 
mother-in-law. 

The governors of provinces and the magis- 
trates of cities and towns are taken from an of- 
ficial class composed of those who have passed a 



82 Lights and Shadows otf 

series of examinations in the Confucian classics. 
Hundreds of thousands of the voting men of 
China go up every year to the provincial capit- 
als to compete for the degree that puts them in 
the line of promotion. These are the so-called 
"Literati," whose education we might suppose 
would make them the friends of light and pro- 
gress. But, as a matter of fact, it only fortifies 
them in their lofty scorn of anything more mod- 
ern than Confucius. And besides, being either 
officials or expectant officials, all their personal 
hopes and interests are bound up in the system 
that now exists, and so they present a solid front 
of opposition to anything in the shape of reform 
or change. The few who, by luck, or influence 
or bribery, reach the coveted goal of office re- 
ceive only nominal salaries from the govern- 
ment, which they are expected to supplement by 
such means as opportunity may throw in their 
way. This opportunity they find in pilfering 
the public revenues that pass through their 
hands, in exacting bribes from all litigants, and 
in torturing accused criminals until the last pos- 
sible cash has been extracted from them as the 
price of their release. If they should become 
Christians, they would have to give up their 
handsome incomes from these wages of iniquity. 
They would also have to resign their offices, be- 



Mission Work in the Far East. 83 

cause their official duties require them to engage 
in idolatrous rites and ceremonies. No wonder 
then that the gospel finds in the officials and 
literati of China its bitterest opponents, and 
any one can see that if Satanic inspiration had 
been invoked to devise an official system that 
would present the greatest possible obstacle to 
our Christian missions, he could not improve 
upon the one that now exists. 

In the industrial sphere there has been devel- 
oped a guild system that holds all trades and 
professions in an iron grip. Every merchant or 
artisan must belong to the guild, or be boycotted. 
Even the beggars and thieves have guilds, the 
initiation fee to the beggars' guild in Soochow 
being $30 (Mexican). And if anyone attempts 
to practice this honored profession without be- 
ing a member of the guild, a committee is ap- 
pointed, who take their stand on a bridge in the 
dusk of the evening and, as the offender passes 
by, a knock on the head and a toss into the canal 
bring his career to a speedy and inglorious ter- 
mination. The guilds as such are taxed to sup- 
port the temples and the idol processions. When 
one becomes a Christian, he will no longer wish 
to help support idolatry. He must therefore 
break with the guild and become an industrial 
outcast. If we had such a system to contend 



84 Lights and Shadows of 

with in this country, it would certainly dimin- 
ish the number of our professed converts, even 
though it might improve their quality. The 
religions of China a^e said to be 

Religions. & 

Buddhism, Tauism, and Confucian- 
ism in the form of ancestral worship. But these 
have long been boiling in a pot together until 
they have lost their distinctive characteristics, 
and the people have them hopelessly confused. 
I saw at Shanghai a Tauist priest conducting 
Confucian worship in a Buddhist temple. The 
residuum from the old religions is a system of 
demon worship, which is a veritable reign of ter- 
ror, and is the source of untold misery as well as 
of mental and spiritual degradation. The peo- 
ple believe that earth and air and water are 
filled with malignant spirits that pursue them 
night and day, and the effort to propitiate them, 
or to cajole them, or to dodge them, is the aim 
of nine-tenths of their religious observances. 
Departed ancestors are kept in good humor by 
burning paper money and clothes and horses 
and other conveniences at their tombs, which, 
being etherealized in smoke, become available 
for use in the spirit world. The odor of savory 
viands set on tables around their tombs is also 
thought to be necessary for their nourishment 
and gratifying to their spiritual olfactories. 



Mission Work in the Far East. 85 

The spirits of wind and water are fortunately 
supposed to be able to travel only in straight 
lines. Hence you will see rectangular brick pil- 
lars built opposite a man's front gate, a little 
larger than the opening. The spirits coming in 
that direction butt against this pillar and are 
thrown to the ground. When they get up and 
start again, they must still go in a straight line, 
and so their entrance into the premises is pre- 
vented. Every tiled roof has an upward curve 
at each corner. This is to give any vagrant 
spirit who might be sliding down the comb of 
the roof a slant upward as he leaves it, so that he 
will not come gliding through the door or win- 
dow of some adjoining house. Fear of the con- 
sequences winch may come to them through the 
ill will of these ancestral and other spirits if the 
honors due them are in any way neglected, a 
fear that often abides long after the mind has 
been emancipated from belief in them, is one of 
the hardest things to be overcome with those 
who are brought to consider the claims of the 
gospel. 

Then there is the gambling curse, almost uni- 
versally prevalent, and the opium curse, the 
smell of which is in all the air and the pallor of 
it on millions of faces, and many other things 
of which there is no more time to speak, which, 



86 Lights and Shadows of 

taken all together, make up a situation which 
would seem to render the evangelization of 
"China an utterly impracticable and hopeless un- 
dertaking. It is no wonder that men of the 
world, looking at it from their worldly stand- 
point, have so regarded it, and have told us that 
the monev and the lives of the men and women 
devoted to this work are being simply thrown 
away. Are they ? Let us see. 
„ , Robert Morrison went as the first 

Results. 

Protestant missionary to China in 
1807. When he died, in 1834, he had only a 
half-dozen professed converts to show as the re- 
sult of his life work. And some, who forgot 
that foundations have to be laid before a build- 
ing can be erected, said that he had thrown his 
life away. But to-dav there is a Protestant 
church in China with about 80,000 communing 
members, more than half of whom have been 
added in the last eight years, and five-sixths of 
them in the last twenty years. The rate of pro- 
gress steadily increases as the number of trained 
natives increases who are prepared to preach 
the gospel to their own people. The number is 
already great enough to show that human impos- 
sibilities and insurmountable obstacles do not 
count as such when they come into collision with 
the power of God in the gospel. 



Mission Work in the Far East. 8Y 
But, looking to the future of the 

Character 7 ° 

of native church in China, the most important 

Christians. . . , . 

question is not now many native 
Christians are there, but what kind of Christians 
are they ? 

There are some of all classes, but most of 
them are of the poorer classes, as was the case 
with the church which Christ and the apostles 
established. Some have come in from wrong 
motives, hoping for employment, or the foreign- 
ers' help in law-suits, or some material advan- 
tage. This cannot be always prevented, al- 
though the greatest possible pains are taken to 
prevent it. The great majority of them, how- 
ever, have come in expecting on the worldly side 
just what they found — disinheritance, boycot- 
ting, abandonment of family and friends, and 
a thousand forms of persecution. Many are as 
to knowledge mere babes in Christ. In symme- 
try of Christian character we cannot rightly ex- 
pect of them what we do of those who have been 
born in the midst of Christian environments and 
reared in Christian homes. But I bear witness 
of what I saw among them, that in simple child- 
like faith, in zeal for the cause they have es- 
poused and in the patient endurance of persecu- 
tion many of them have been, and are now, show- 
ing the spirit of the Christians of apostolic days. 



88 Lights ajto Shadows of 

In our little church at Soochow there is a na- 
tive preacher by the name of Mr. Leu. When 
Dr. Davis was negotiating for the land on which 
our hospital is built, Mr. Leu offered his ser- 
vices to act as native "middleman" in the pur- 
chase. The local magistrate is bitterly opposed 
to the foreigners acquiring property, and in a 
similar transaction some years ago the magis- 
trate in charge revenged himself on the native 
who took part in it by arresting him on some 
false accusation and throwing him into prison, 
where he lay for several years. This was the 
probable fate of Mr. Leu. But he did not hesitate 
on that account. He went out and found an old 
man and initiated him into the care of his home, 
so that the old man could manage things for him 
during the indefinite time that he expected to lie 
in prison. He did not seem to be conscious that 
he was doing anything heroic. But, knowing as 
he did the barbarities of a Chinese prison, it 
seems to me that in this matter this man was a 
Christian hero, of the very same spirit with him 
who said in the olden time, "I am ready, not to 
be bound only, but also to die at Jerusalem, for 
the name of the Lord Jesus." 

I am thankful to say that the land for the 
hospital was secured, and, by the kind provi- 
dence of God, Mr. Leu was saved from the fate 



Mission Work in the Far East. 89 

which he and his friends anticipated for him. 
And this was the man who stood up in the con- 
gregation in Soochow one Sunday morning, in 
last October, and responded to my address, ask- 
ing me to carry back to the home church a mes- 
sage of love and gratitude from him and his peo- 
ple for sending them the gospel, and to ask your 
prayers, "not/' he said, "that we may not have 
to suffer persecution, for we read in this Bible 
that those who will live godly in Christ Jesus 
must suffer persecution, but that God will al- 
ways be with us in future as He has been in the 
past, and give us His grace to make us faithful 
unto death." 

For my part, I felt like sitting at that dis- 
ciple's feet, that I might learn more of the spirit 
of Christ. And this is not a solitary case, but 
there are many like him among the Christians 
of China who are ready any hour to give the su- 
preme test of their fidelity and love. And we 
have now reached a stage in our work when we 
are no longer compelled as Judson was when 
asked what was the prospect in Burmah, to point 
to the Bible and say, "Bright as the promises of 
God." We can point to the promises, and also 
to the actual visible results, so large and so rap- 
idly increasing in quantity, and some of them 
so magnificent in quality, and say, "We are not 



90 Lights and Shadows oi? 

ashamed of the gospel of Christ, for it is the 
power of God unto salvation" — even in China. 
The power of God will not fail us. He is in 
China to-day working mightier miracles than 
that by which the walls of Jericho were thrown 
down. The native Christians there will not fail 
us. They have already been tried in the fire and 
their faith found to be of the quality that is im- 
perishable. The Protestant missionaries there 
will not fail us. The church has never had a 
nobler or more self-denying band of workers 
than they are. The only cloud on the horizon is 
that the church at home seems at present unwill- 
ing to give them the support and re-enforce- 
ment they need in the ever-widening work that 
opens up before them. 



Mission Work in the Far East. 91 



CHAPTEE VII. 

The Country and People of Korea. 

In the month of October, 1897, I watched a 
Korean sunset from the top of a hill near the vil- 
lage of Kunsan, on the southwestern coast. The 
sombre effect of the brown rocks of the coast 
cliffs and of the little islands in the bay, and of 
the brown grass on the hills, was only intensified 
by the green of a few scattering, scrubby pines. 
The golden clouds and the scarlet waters were as 
still as if they had been painted on a canvas. 
There was hardly a breath of movement in the 
air, and the only things in all the landscape that 
seemed possessed of waking life were myself 
and a few geese and ducks that were floating 
lazily out on the bosom of the ebbing tide. 

The scene was typical of that far-away little 
kingdom which we insist on calling Korea, but 
which the natives call Choson, — the "Land of 
the Morning Calm." It was indeed a land of 
"calm," of industrial, social, political, religious, 
and every other kind of calm, from immemorial 
days of old until about twenty-five years ago, 
when its quietude began to be disturbed by visi- 



92 Lights ais t d Shadows of 

tors from the West, firing salutes from their bat- 
tleships in its harbors and asking the privilege 
of extending to it the benefits of their protection 
and trade. In recent years it has become the 
passive but interested subject of much interest- 
ing diplomacy among these visitors, especially 
those representing Russia and England. Rus- 
sia's interest was to dominate Korea, not for the 
sake of any immediate value to her of the trade 
and resources of the country, but with the view 
of possessing herself of one of the fine harbors, 
notably that of Port Lazareff, on the eastern 
coast, both as the long-coveted outlet for her 
trans-Siberian trade, and as a place where she 
might gradually assemble a navy that would en- 
able her to cope with England in the waters of 
the Ear East. England's interest was to frus- 
trate the designs of Russia. Now that Russia 
has secured her outlet in Port Arthur on the 
China coast, it is noticeable that she is not inter- 
esting herself in Korea to the same extent as for- 
merly. That she may cease to do so entirely is 
a consummation devoutly to be wished, for many 
reasons, but especially in the interest of our 
Protestant missionary work. Our country has 
as yet had no political interests in Korea at all 
and has been concerned in none of her recent po- 
litical troubles. Eor this reason our mission- 



Mission Work in the Far East. 93 

aries are more welcome there than those of any 
other country. 

The Korean peninsula stretches from the 
southern boundary of Manchuria and the north- 
east boundary of China southward, between the 
Geography thirty-third and forty-fourth degrees 
and climate. f nor th latitude. It is traversed 
through its whole length by a range of moun- 
tains that sends off frequent spurs in both direc- 
tions to the sea. These geographical conditions 
give it a climate which, excepting the rainy sea- 
son, which lasts about two months in summer, is 
simply superb. The scenery is picturesque and 
the valleys are fertile, and both would be more 
so but for the utter denudation of the hills by the 
peasants in search of fuel, which is in more 
senses than one "the burning question" in all the 
Orient. In the north there is said to be some 
fine timbered lands, but in the south, where I 
travelled, there is only an occasional patch of 
scrubby pines, reserved by the government, and 
twisted into every conceivable shape by the 
winds. 

As in China, the hills are all cemeteries, 
though not so thickly populated with the dead as 
the hills of China. High up on their sides and 
tops are the well-kept grassy mounds, the graves 
of the well-to-do, generally marked by stone 



94 Lights ajs t d Shadows of 

slabs, and regularly visited and put in order once 
a year. 

Lower down are the unburied bodies of the 
peasants, wrapped in coffins of rice straw, and in 
the case of children, mounted on sticks or swung 
from the boughs of trees to keep them from be- 
ing eaten by the foxes. This objectionable cus- 
tom springs, perhaps, not so much from indiffer- 
ence to the bodies of their dead as from the fear 
that their burial before the proper place had 
been selected by the geomancer would bring dis- 
aster to the family. 

The staple productions are rice and beans and 
millet, as condiments to which a variety of sal- 
ads, turnips, and red pepper are grown. I found 
the native food uneatable, for reasons both of 
taste and of sentiment. Unless by special order, 
the rice and beans are cooked together and then 
seasoned with pepper until the whole mixture 
is red. A flavor as of ancient dish water exhales 
from the mixture when hot. If meat is served, 
one knows not whether it was killed or died a 
natural death. Most likely the latter, but if 
killed, the method is usually by strangling, so 
as not to lose the weight of the blood. One can 
venture on the fish, because they have no blood, 
and we ourselves have learned no better as yet 
than to let the fish we eat die a natural death, 



Mission Work in the Far East. 95 

The chief reliance of the missionary and trav- 
eller in Korea for food for some time to come 
must be on canned goods from San Francisco. 

With somewhat better conditions of travel and 
forage, Korea would be the sportsman's para- 
Game dise. In the autumn the grassy hills 
are thick with pheasants, and the rice 
fields with ducks and geese. Small deer and 
leopards are plentiful in many places, and tigers 
scarcely inferior to the Eoyal Bengal make 
themselves altogether too familiar around some 
of the villages for the comfort of the Koreans, 
who are not supplied with the proper munitions 
of war to cope with them. Some of the natives 
have old match-lock rifles with which they shoot 
ducks and geese sitting, provided they will sit 
long enough after the native gets a bead on them 
for the old string fuse to burn up to the powder 
in the flash pan. With such weapons they can- 
not aspire to shoot game on the wing, but they 
express their sportsman's instinct by shouts of 
delight when they see a foreigner bring down a 
flying goose with a breech-loader. 

If one wishes to describe the conditions of 
interior travel in Korea he may use any de- 
rogatory word our language con- 
tains, or any combination of them, 
without the slightest danger of exaggeration. 



96 Lights azstd Shadows of 

There are no made roads and no canals to 
take the place of them as in China. Short 
journeys may be made in comfort in a sedan 
chair. But for long journeys, requiring much 
weight and bulk of luggage, the favorite in- 
strument of transportation is that unique, nat- 
ural phenomenon, the Korean pony. This ani- 
mal possesses the general contour of a horse, but 
in other respects he is peculiar, and peculiar to 
Korea. He is verv small, but is a marvel of 
strength and endurance. His face is verv much 
dished, and his face expresses his character, 
which attains perhaps the maximum of com- 
bined obstinacy and ferocity possible to horse 
flesh. Xot wishing to do him injustice, I have 
made comparison with the observations of other 
travellers and find them substantiallv the same 
as my own. Mrs. Bishop pronounces him to 
be "among the most salient features of Korea," 
and savs that, though she dearlv loved horses, 
she was not able in a whole month to establish 
anv friendlv relations with the one she rode. 
Mr. Gale, in his "Korean Sketches," tells us 
that he exists in three stages of development. 
He grows wild on a certain island, where a num- 
ber of them are lassoed each year and taken to 
the royal stables. Here he spends his palmy 
days. When he begins to look shaggy and sheepy 



Mission Woke: in the Fak East. 97 

from age he is taken out and used as a pack 
pony for the government. This is the second 
stage, during which he develops ringbone, raw- 
back, stringhalt, spavin and heaves. Then he 
is purchased by a dealer, who keeps him to hire 
to foreigners. But through all these stages his 
spirit remains unbroken, and while he lives he 
will yield the palm to no other living horse in 
the weight he will carry and the distance he will 
travel in a day. My experience of him was on a 
journey of 175 miles from Seoiil to Chunju, in 
company with Mr. Eugene Bell, of our mission, 
which we accomplished in five days. The im- 
pedimenta for this journey for each pony were 
two good boxes of provisions and utensils, a va- 
lise, a folding cot, a comfort, a pillow and blan- 
ket, besides the rider. Mounted on them, on top 
of all this luggage, with no support for back or 
feet or hands, our appearance was no less pictur- 
esque than our situation was helpless and un- 
comfortable. But I soon learned the secret of 
this mode of travel. It is to ride until your back 
is so tired you cannot possibly endure it longer ; 
then walk till you are so wearied that any change 
will be a relief ; then mount your pony again. I 
found also that in crossing streams on arched 
dirt bridges two feet wide, walking was prefer- 
able to riding, and also when the road was the 



98 Lights and Shadows of 

narrow bank between two flooded rice fields, 
Our resting place at night was the Korean inn, 
if resting place it could be calledo Its guest room 
opens on the enclosed back yard of the premises, 
the rendezvous of our ponies and of the land- 
lord's dogs and pigs and chickens, and furnished 
with earthenware jars, the receptacle of what- 
ever can be made available to improve the pro- 
ductiveness of the rice fields. The room is nine 
feet by six, with a raised floor heated hot by a 
flue under it, and no opening except the small 
door by which we enter. Our alternative was 
to open the door to the incursion of crawling 
and hopping parasites from without, or to close 
it and take our chances with the stifling air 
within. We unwisely chose the latter, with the 
result that, after a brief nap, I awoke in a night- 
mare, dreaming that I was buried alive. We 
then tried it with the door open, and were weary 
enough to bid defiance to the animal creation, 
large or small, to disturb our slumbers. But 
just then there appeared on the scene a Budd- 
hist monk with his band of helpers, trying to 
exorcise a demon from a neighboring house 
where there was small-pox, beating gongs and 
blowing something that sounded like a Scotch 
bagpipe, and singing tunes, the like of which 
I never heard before, and hoped I might never 



Mission Work in the Far East. 99 

Lear again. This benevolent enterprise was kept 
up till two o'clock in the morning, with what 
success we never learned, as we rose at half -past 
four and proceeded on our journey. I indulged 
the hope on starting that after a day or two Ave 
would toughen to our experiences and find them 
less intolerable. This might have been the case, 
but for the development of a Korean carbuncle 
on the hip joint. As it was, at the end of the 
journey I was more than satisfied to be simply 
alive. Such is the romance and luxury of mis- 
sionary itinerating in Korea. And at present 
much the larger part of male missionary life 
there is itinerating. 

The port of entry to Korea from the west is 
Chemulpo, in whose so-called harbor the tide 
cities and r ^ ses from twenty-five to forty feet. 

villages. When the tide recedes, the bottom 
for a mile out is left entirely bared, leaving 
junks and small steamers resting on the ooze 
till another tide comes in to float them. Fiftv- 
six miles from Chemulpo up the river Han, and 
three miles from the river, lies Seoiil, the capi- 
tal of the country. 

It was up this stretch of river that, in 1872, 
Commodore Rogers and Ca.pt. Schley and En- 
sign Mitchell Chester, now captain of ^b.e gun- 
boat Cincinnati, attempted to navigate the old 



100 Lights ant> Shadows of 

Monocacy, the "Noah's Ark" of our Asiatic 
squadron, to avenge the murder of the crew of 
an American schooner that was wrecked on the 
northwestern coast. They had the usual experi- 
ence of those who attempt this journey, whether 
by gunboat, steam launch, or junk, of finding 
themselves stuck in the mud a few miles up the 
river, and they had to take to the land to ac- 
complish their purpose. This they did, with dif- 
ficulty however, for the Koreans fought desper- 
ately from behind their rock forts on the moun- 
tain cliffs. But their string-fuse jingals were 
too long in going off, and their old Chinese brass 
cannon all went off at once, leaving them help- 
less at the hands of the Americans, who shot and 
bayonetted together about six hundred of them. 
The American loss was Lieut. McKee and two 
marines killed, and eight wounded. Except in 
the display of American pluck it was an un- 
worthy episode, which the Koreans seem hap- 
pily to have forgotten. 

In respect of population, Seoiil ranks as one 
of the great cities of the Far East, containing 
about 250,000 inhabitants. But in any other 
respect than population it hardly deserves the 
name of a city at all. It has no arts nor manu- 
factures worth speaking of. As to trade, Mrs. 
Bishop says truly that "it is the commercial 



Mission Woek in the Far East. 101 

centre of a people whose ideas of commerce are 
limited to huckstering transactions." It has no 
two-storied houses, except a few built by foreign- 
ers, even the royal palaces being of but one story. 
A few of the houses are built of wood, and cov- 
ered with tiles, but the vast majority of them 
are simply mud huts with three small rooms, 
covered with thatched straw. Korea is a coun- 
try of villages, however, rather than of large 
cities, and every village is like every other vil- 
lage, a collection of these mud huts, scattered 
all over the country at an average distance of 
from three to five miles. 

The streets of cities and villages alike are nar- 
row alleys with open gutters on either side, filled 
with malodorous sewage, in which naked chil- 
dren play as though they were clear mountain 
streams. It must be said for the city of Seoiil, 
however, that its street odors are less pungent 
and stifling than those of a Chinese city, and it 
is distinguished by three fine boulevards, fifty 
yards wide, and smoothly graveled, which shine 
in the prospect from the city wall with a conspic- 
uousness increased by contrast with their sur- 
roundings. Thronged with pedestrians of both 
sexes, all dressed in white, and topped off with 
such a variety of headgear as the ingenuity of 
no other people on earth has invented, every pro- 



102 Lights and Shadows of 

fession, trade, or grade of social life being dis- 
tinguished by its own peculiar hat, these boule- 
vards present an appearance that can hardly be 
matched for picturesqueness in the street life of 
the world. Another unique feature of Korean 
street and road life is the endless procession of 
bulls, covered with enormous loads of grass or 
twigs, until only the face and lower part of the 
limbs are visible, led by a ring in the nose, per- 
fectly docile, and politely turning aside without 
suggestion from their drivers to give the right 
of way to the passing traveller. 

Approaching Korea from the west, about 
thirty miles from the mainland we pass through 
Th an archipelago of small rocky islands. 

Here we get our first view of the na- 
tives, cruising among these islands in their little 
brown junks, which they have loaded from the 
hulk to the top of the mast with bundles of grass 
gathered on the islands for fuel. Our first ob- 
servation of them is that they are all dressed 
from top to toe in white cotton. This costume is 
universal, and indicates one of their most inter- 
esting national peculiarities. 

Their white dress is a badge of national 

mourning. In former years when any member 

a nation of °^ the royal family died, the nation 

mourners. was required to wear white for twelve 



Mission Work in the Far East. 103 

months. In later and more troublous times, the 
occasion for the white dress came so often, and 
the expense and trouble of changing to it was 
so burdensome, that they adopted it as the per- 
manent national costume, so as to be in readi- 
ness for the emergency as it might arise. 

When any member of a family dies, the fam- 
ily is expected to go into mourning from one to 
three years, according to the nearness of the re- 
lationship. The badge of this family mourning 
for the men is an enormous bamboo hat, of coni- 
cal shape, coming down over the face and shoul- 
ders like an umbrella, and signifying that 
"Heaven is angry with the mourner, and does 
not wish to look upon his face." During this 
mourning period it is contrary to custom for the 
man to marry. And so it often happens that, by 
a succession of familv bereavements one finds 
himself carried on past youth and middle life, 
even to old age, and condemned at last to an en- 
forced permanent celibacy. This is the most de- 
plorable of calamities to an Oriental, because 
it means that he shall have no male posterity to 
care for his grave and to worship his departed 
spirit. Furthermore, with the Koreans it en- 
tails the disadvantage that an unmarried man, 
though he should live to ninety years of age, is 
always regarded and treated as a "boy," entitled 



104 Lights and Shadows of 

to no respect, and always to be addressed in the 
"lowest talk." It is in their funeral processions 
that mourning is reduced to the finest of the fine 
arts. The pall-bearers carry the coffin hoisted 
on poles, singing a woeful dirge, and ever and 
anon turning and retracing their steps, or stop- 
ping and marking time, as though they could not 
go upon their melancholy errand. Much of this 
mourning, of course, is mere form and confor- 
mity to custom. But perhaps there is no nation 
of people more afflicted with real sorrows than 
the Koreans, and none therefore with a deeper 
need of, and a stronger claim on, that gospel 
which offers the only real comfort that this 
world knows to the mourning sons of men. 

On landing at Chemulpo, a boy about fourteen 
years of age took my two steamer trunks and a 
Burden- valise and piled them on a wooden 

bearers. rack,which they call a"chee-kai," and 
getting under the burden, walked with it with 
apparent ease up a steep hill about two hundred 
yards to the hotel. Another, of about the same 
size, took a cooking stove on his back and did the 
same thing. It is said to be not uncommon for a 
CTown man to carry in this way for several miles 
a burden of four hundred pounds. A country- 
man will carry one hundred and fifty pounds 
of rice on his back from the point of the penin- 




TRANSPORTATION BY CHEE-KAI 



Mission Woek in the Far East. 105 

sula two hundred miles to the capital, and carry 
back the same weight of baled cloth. A child 
five years old will play all day with one a year 
old strapped to his back. In this way the loin 
muscles are trained from infancy for their work. 
Everywhere one goes throughout Korea he sees 
these human beasts of burden stooping under 
their loads ; and one thinks of the other burdens 
they carry, of unforgiven sins and uncomforted 
sorrows, and wonders if there might not be for 
them a special meaning and a peculiar sweet- 
ness in the Saviour's invitation to those that 
"labor and are heavy laden." May the day soon 
come when all of them shall hear it, and when 
all of them who will may come to Him and find 
rest for both body and soul. To-day, in all the 
Orient, the cheapest of all things is man. Only 
in the Christ we preach to him will he find again 
the value of his manhood as well as the supply 
of his spiritual needs. 

characteris- ^ r * Curzon mentions as one of the 
tics. Oriental traits which he found every- 
where in his travels, from India to the farth- 
est east, "a statuesque and inexhaustible pa- 
tience, which attaches no value to time, and 
wages an unappeasable warfare against hurry." 
Absence of Perhaps it is among the Koreans 
Hurry. t kat t y s tra ^. k as a ttained its most 



106 Lights and Shadows of 

extreme development. I encountered it among 
my very first experiences in a way not soon 
to be forgotten. Attempting to go by the lit- 
tle river steamer from Chemulpo to Seoul, we 
had the usual experience a few miles up the 
river of finding ourselves deposited on a sand- 
bank. Korean sail and row boats were every- 
where in evidence, but none of them could be 
persuaded to attempt the passage against an 
adverse tide. After some hours delay a Japa- 
nese sampan was sighted coming down the river, 
loaded with Koreans on their wav to a market 
at some place about two days' journey distant. 
AVe proposed to the Japanese boatman to unload 
his Koreans and take us up the river for a con- 
sideration of ten dollars. After some parley, 
they consented to the arrangement and took 
their places on the river bank, where thev sat 
like sea fowls, perfectly quiet and content, for 
eighteen hours until the boatman returned. At 
Seoiil we had to hire some ponies, and having 
but one day in which to see the sights of the cap- 
ital, we sought to expedite this business trans- 
action as much as possible. Several times the 
dealer brought us ponies which he knew we 
would reject on account of their dilapidated con- 
dition. Each time Mr. Bell would shout at him, 
pointing to the front gate, "Go — go, go fast, and 



Mission Work in the Far East. 107 

bring us the right kind of ponies/' using all the 
additional hurrying words that his Korean vo- 
cabulary suitable to a missionary contained. 
When the trade was finally closed, we found that 
we had been engaged in it exactly five hours. 
They will not be in a hurry, and woe be to the 
fast-going western man that goes out there and 
tries to make them be. The lines in which Mr. 
Rudyard Kipling describes the fate of the Eng- 
lishman trying to do the same thing in India will 
also be true of him. Says Mr. Kipling : 

" It is not good for the Christian's health 

To hustle the Aryan brown, 
For the Christian riles and the Aryan smiles, 

And he weareth the Christian down. 
And the end of the fight is a tombstone white, 

With the name of the late deceased, 
And the epitaph drear, ( A fool lies here, 

Who tried to hustle the East.' " 

The Koreans are similar to both Chinese and 
Japanese in feature and physique, but in some 
respects are different from both. In color they 
are a lighter shade of yellow than either, and 
their hair is frequently of a russet brown color. 
They are of good size, but much deteriorated 
physically from various blood diseases that orig- 
inate in their unsanitary mode of living. They 
are very hospitable and polite, and, as compared 
with Chinese and Japanese, quite amiably dis- 



108 Lights and Shadows of 

posed towards foreigners. The masses are 
wretchedly ignorant, as must be the case under 
such a government as they have, but a few of 
them who have gone abroad and been educated 
in this country and in Europe, have demon- 
strated that they are by no means deficient in 
native capacity. Men like Dr. Philip Jaisohn, 
editor of the Korean Independent newspaper, 
and Mr. Tun, a distinguished graduate of our 
Vanderbilt Universitv, and afterwards Minis- 
ter of Education in the government of Korea, 
both of them also bold and outspoken Chris- 
tians, are men who, for character and intelli- 
gence would be a credit to any country. Any 
country that can produce such men as these is a 
country worth trying to save. 

The government of Korea is one of the old pa- 
ternal despotisms that have been the immemorial 
curse of Asia. The king, recently ad- 

Governmeut. < ° 7 u 

vanced to the dignity of Emperor, 
although he is a person of very great inter- 
national insignificance, is none the less the object 
of superstitious veneration by his own people, 
who call him "the Son of Heaven/' to whom his 
will is law, and who belong to him, body and 
soul, in fee simple. Local government is in the 
hands of a hereditary ruling class called Tang- 
bans, in whom we find the apotheosis of the gen- 



Mission Woek in the Far East. 109 

tleman of elegant leisure. Being quite numer- 
ous, not all of them can be in office at any one 
time. But those who are in know not how soon 
they may be out, and those who are out hope 
soon to be in, and so they stand by one another, 
extending and receiving favors as their mutual 
needs and abilities demand and make practi- 
cable. The first principle of Tangban political 
economy is that no one of his class is ever under 
any circumstances to do any work. Even to 
light his own pipe would require an altogether 
unbecoming amount of exertion, and so he 
smokes a pipe with a stem so long that he must 
needs have a servant to light it for him. When 
out of pocket, he pays long visits to his friends, 
using and abusing the hospitality which it would 
be a disreputable breach of ancient custom not 
to extend. 

The second principle of their political econ- 
omy is that no one of the common people is to 
be allowed to accumulate property. A new gate, 
a repaired roof, or any visible sign of improved 
circumstances is liable to prove the occasion of 
arrest. The charge may be that the man was 
heard to speak disrespectfully of his mother. 
No matter what the charge is, once in the magis- 
trate's prison he stays there, being "bambooed" 
every morning at sunrise, until all the available 



110 Lights axd Shadows of 

money of the family has been paid in as the 
price of his release. The consequence of this 
system is, of course, the universal poverty of the 
common people, who not only have no incentive 
for trying to accumulate property, but the 
strongest possible incentive for not doing so. 
There is an average grade of cruelty and oppres- 
sion on the part of these officials that is expected, 
and if one does not exceed it, perhaps the people 
may build a monument to him when he dies, in- 
scribed with the praise of his moderation and 
virtue. But sometimes when one goes too far 
in excess of this average grade, and becomes in- 
tolerable, the people give way to their outraged 
sense of justice and put him to death. The fact 
that thev have done this occasionally to individ- 
uals gives reason to hope that they may some day 
have enough manhood developed in them to rise 
up and destroy the system, and thus open the 
way for the possible splendid future of their 
beautiful and fertile land. 

If it be possible for the social and domestic 
life of a people to be arranged on a more unde- 
sociaiand sirable basis than that of the Ko- 
domesticiife. re ans, I am unable to imagine what 
that arrangement would be. Polygamy in the 
technical sense does not prevail. Only one legal 
wife is recognized. But every man takes to him- 



r 




"6 




■ m. m wi 




Mission Woek m the Far East. Ill 

self as many "secondary" wives as he can pro- 
vide room for and support. In order that they 
may be serviceable in all kinds of work, the 
women of the peasantry have the freedom of 
the streets and roads and rice fields ; but those of 
the upper classes live in the back rooms of their 
little houses in total seclusion. The unwilling- 
ness of the Koreans to let their women be seen 
leads to one of the many reversals of our cus- 
toms, in that men going on pleasure escapades 
go in the day time, while the women go on theirs 
at night. When a woman must go out in the day 
time she goes in a closed chair. The coolies take 
the chair and set it down in the back yard and 
retire. When the "coast is clear," the woman 
comes out and takes her seat in the chair and 
closes all the openings. Then the coolies come 
back and carry her to her destination. Although 
they cannot be seen, the number of a man's wives 
is sometimes revealed to the traveller in a pecu- 
liar way. In passing through the villages a 
ceaseless plunk, plunk, plunk is heard, which 
is the sound of the "ironing" of the gentlemen's 
white clothes by beating them on a smooth stone 
or piece of wood. The frequency and rhythm of 
the beats indicate whether one, two, or more 
wives are engaged in the ironing industry. This, 
and the preparation of his meals, and the rear- 
ing of sons to look after his post-mortem inter- 



112 Lights and Shadows of 

ests, are what the men think the women were 
made for. Love, confidence, and companionship 
between husbands and wives are almost un- 
known. Hence there are no homes in Korea. 
To carry the light of the gospel into these gloomy 
little prisons and transform them into Christian 
homes is the work which a trumpet voice of duty 
and opportunity is now calling the women of our 
country to do. 

Excepting the non-existence of Tauism, Korea 
is religiously a small replica of China. The edu- 
„ . cation of the higher classes is based on 

Religions. ° 

the Confucian classics, and the Con- 
fucian ethics are their substitute for religion. 
Confucian ancestor worship prevails among all 
classes. Buddhism was transplanted from China 
in the fourth century and soon gained the nomi- 
nal adherence of the people, but it seems never 
to have taken very strong hold of the popular 
mind, and is now far gone in dilapidation and 
decay. Its temples are few and mean, and its 
priesthood in such disrepute that, until since the 
late war, one was not allowed to enter the gates 
of the capital. Demon worship is universal, but 
owing to the less serious turn of the Korean 
mind, it is not quite such a reign of terror as it 
is in China. Yet it is bad enough, and probably 
costs the country each year as much as would be 
necessary to evangelize it from one end to the 



Mission Work in the Far East. 113 

other. As a defensive apparatus against the 
demons, we see wooden posts set up on the roads 
leading into villages, with ugly heads carved at 
the top, the lips, cheeks, and eyebrows being 
smeared with red and white paint. Straw ropes, 
old rags, and wooden figures of birds are hung 
in the boughs of trees for the same purpose. 
When, in spite of these obstructions, the demons 
get into the village, bringing sickness and ill- 
luck to the people, then the witch doctor comes 
to the rescue. His equipment consists of vari- 
ous and effective noise-producing instruments, 
and witch broths, brewed of toads, snakes, lizards, 
ground-up tigers' teeth, and all the horrible and 
forbidding things the country affords. These 
he administers by the bowlful to people with 
typhoid fever or cholera or small-pox. He also 
carries a long, sharp needle, which he inserts 
into whatever part of the victim's body the pain 
gives evidence of the demon's location, to make 
a hole to let the demon out ! These are success- 
ful practitioners to the extent that in a fair pro- 
portion of cases they succeed in letting the de- 
mon out along with the spirit of the patient. 

Such are a few items in the long list of human 
and Satanic oppressions that afflict this interest- 
ing people. May the day soon come when they 
shall know the truth, and the truth shall make 
them free. 



114 Lights and Shadows of 



CHAPTER VIII. 
Mission Work in Korea. 

The historv of Protestant mission work in 
Korea is brief but glorious. Although only fif- 
teen years have elapsed since the work began, a 
Christian church already exists, containing sev- 
eral thousand members, a church full of life, 
vigor and aggressiveness, and showing both the 
disposition and the ability to support and propa- 
gate itself. 

The first missionaries anticipated much dif- 
ficulty in carrying on their work from the lethar- 
Difficuiti £1° character of the people. But the 
enterprising spirit manifested by 
those who have become Christians indicates that 
this lethargy is rather a temporary product of 
their environment than an innate and ineradi- 
cable trait. 

The language is also said to be more difficult 
of acquisition than either the Chinese or Japa- 
nese, with the added difficulty that there are 
almost no competent native teachers of it avail- 
able. The native reads the written language 



Mission Work in the Far East. 115 

with a dreadful and discordant tune, which no 
foreigner could learn if he would or would learn 
if he could. Consequently, the process of learn- 
ing to read is slow and toilsome to the last de- 
gree. Learning to talk is even more slow and 
toilsome, because of the multitude and confu- 
sion of honorifics, the misuse of which subjects 
the speaker to misunderstanding and ridicule. 
One must indicate to which one of the many 
social grades the person spoken to belongs by 
using a different termination to the verb for 
each grade. The use of "high talk" to a coolie 
Would be as absurd in his estimation as the use 
of "low talk" to a Yangban would be insulting. 
Patience and perseverance, however, for about 
the space of three years, will serve to loose the 
tongue of any missionary of average linguistic 
ability, and these difficulties are of small ac- 
count compared with some that have to be en- 
countered in other fields. 

Three things especially combine to make Ko- 
rea one of the most interesting and hopeful of 
Encouraging all mission fields to-day. One is the 
features. wa y ^he people live, in villages rather 
than in large cities, rendering them more easy 
of access and more susceptible of being influ- 
enced. Another is the disposition they have 
shown to help themselves and support their own 



116 Lights and Shadows of 

work. The third is their comparative friendli- 
ness to the foreigner. Instead of calling him 
"foreign devil/' like the Chinese, they look up 
to him with respect and address him as Tai-in 
— "Great man" — and, although at first some- 
what offish and afraid, by a little kindness they 
are easily won to confidence and friendship. 
This friendly attitude is perhaps largely due to 
the fact that from the beginning the medical 
work has gone hand in hand with, or rather in 
advance of, the preaching work. 

The first resident missionary was Dr. H. N. 
Allen, of the Northern Presbyterian Board. 
Medical Soon after his arrival, in 1884, he 

missions. wag called, in to sew up some gashes 
in the person of Mr. Min Yong Ik, a cousin of 
the Queen, made during a riot at the Palace. In 
appreciation of this service the king established 
a hospital, of which Dr. Allen was put in charge. 
This opened the way for Dr. H. IT. Underwood, 
who came soon after, to begin his evangelistic 
work. And from that day to this Dr. Allen, 
Dr. Avison, Dr. Scranton, of the Methodist 
Episcopal church, and other physicians at Seoul, 
have, by their ministrations of mercy to the 
thousands of sufferers who have come to them 
for help, been constantly making friends for the 
gospel and securing the government toleration 



Mission Work m the Far East. 117 

ana protection, which have enabled us to carry- 
on our work every where, with one or two excep- 
tions, without let or hindrance. Among our 
pioneer band of Southern Presbyterians is Dr. 
A. D. Drew, who worked with the other physi- 
cians at the capital for the first three years while 
getting his tongue loosed, and has since been 
working in the southern provinces where the 
Southern Presbyterian stations are. He is now 
known all over the country, and by reason of his 
work has, I believe, more influence than any 
other man, native or foreign, in southern Korea. 
While I was at his home in Kunsan two men 
came to be treated by him, both of whom had 
walked from their homes, more than a hundred 
miles distant. As the result of his unremitting 
and self-denying labors, and those of other be- 
loved physicians, the way now lies wide open all 
over southern Korea for our gospel work. 

I saw at Seoiil a neat church, seating about 
two hundred people, which the native Presbyte- 
Native r ^ an Christians there had built en- 

enterprise. tirely by their own exertions and sac- 
rifices. The men wrought with their hands, the 
women sewed, one man pawned his spectacles, 
and most of them tithed their incomes of from 
two to five dollars a month twice over for the 
cause. In the work of the Northern Presbyte- 



118 Lights and Shadows of 

rians in the northern provinces thirty-five 
churches have been built in this way, many self- 
supporting schools established, and many native 
workers are spreading the gospel news far and 
wide, nearly all of them entirely supported by 
their own people. 

The work at our southern stations is in a less 
advanced stage, but is being conducted on the 
same self-supporting basis, and is opening up in 
a way that gives promise of the same kind of suc- 
cess. At Chunju I found Mr. and Mrs. Rey- 
nolds, and Mr. and Miss Tate, and Mr. Harri- 
son and Miss Ingold living, not in the palatial 
residences that certain Oriental travellers on 
the steamer going over told me the missionaries 
akvays lived in, but in the regulation mud huts 
of the natives, with their little rooms of from 
six to nine feet square. Here they had been for 
two years. And yet they seemed as happy as 
any of the people I know who live in two-story 
brick houses in this country. At Kunsan I found 
Dr. Drew and Mr. Junkin with their families 
and Miss Linnie Davis living not only in the 
thatched mud huts, but also in the mud when 
it rained, for they were down in the valley, right 
among the natives. They were happy also, ex- 
cept that some of them were suffering in health 
from their surroundings. If all our church at 



Mission Work in the Far East. 119 

home could have communicated to it some of 
their heroic and self-sacrificing spirit, the whole 
Korean peninsula would soon be resounding 
with what I heard at the Sunday morning ser- 
vice at Kunsan. About forty men were seated 
on the floor of the little native dwelling that 
served for a church. About the same number of 
women were present. They were required by 
Korean custom to be invisible, but were permit- 
ted to hear and participate in the service through 
a piece of cheese cloth stretched over the door of 
an adjoining room. When Mr. Reynolds 
preached I was impressed by their reverent at- 
tention. When he led in prayer they leaned over 
until their foreheads rested on their hands laid 
upon the floor. When they sang their words were 
strange and their voices unmelodious, but I rec- 
ognized the tune as Coronation, and I knew they 
were singing in their Korean tongue, 

"All hail the power of Jesus' name, 
Let angels prostrate fall; 
Bring forth the royal diadem, 
And crown him Lord of all." 

Dear reader, we cannot tell what changes the 
future may bring, but we know that this is the 
day of the church's opportunity in Korea. God 
has set before us there an open door, which He 
will permit no man to shut if we will only enter 



120 Mission Work in the Far East. 

it. It is in the hope that it may contribute some- 
thing towards awakening those who read it to 
the need of the gospel, and to the obligation rest- 
ing on us to make it known in Japan, China, and 
Korea that this little volume is sent forth. 



Appendix. 



REPORT TO THE EXECUTIVE COMMITTEE OF 
FOREIGN MISSIONS, BY THE SECRETARY, 
ON HIS VISIT TO CHINA, KOREA AND JAPAN, 

1897. 

To the Executive Committee of Foreign Missions: 

I hereby present to you the report of my visit to 
our missions in China, Korea and Japan. This 
visit was made in accordance with the advice of the 
General Assembly sitting at Charlotte, N. 0., and 
with the instruction of the Executive Committee 
given at its meeting held on June 8, 1897. 

The advice of the Assembly was given on condi- 
tion that the expense of the visit should be pro- 
vided for without drawing on the Foreign Mission 
treasury. The committee's instruction was given 
on receipt of information that a contribution of 
$100 had been offered from a friend in the city of 
New York, not connected with our church, and 
that other contributions, believed to be sufficient, 
had been offered from other private sources, which 
could not in any way affect the regular contribu- 
tions to our treasury. I am glad to report on my 
return that the expense of the visit was thus fully 
met. 

Leaving home on July 26th, I sailed from San 
Francisco on August 5th, and reached Shanghai 
on September 1st, The plan of the visit included 



122 Lights and Shadows of 

an absence of five months, allowing two months for 
the outward and return voyage, and three months 
for work in the different fields. Of this time it 
was arranged to give six weeks to China and three 
each to Korea and Japan. 

In China I visited all the stations of what is 
known as "The Southern Circuit," except Lingwu, 
which I was prevented from reaching by continu- 
ous rains during my visit to Hangchow. On ac- 
count of detention by sickness and the impos- 
sibility of securing prompt transportation, I was 
compelled to forego the pleasure and profit of visit- 
ing the three northern stations of Tsing-kiang-pu, 
Suchien, and Chuchow-foo. In Korea I visited 
Seou^ where the headquarters of the mission are 
still temporarily located, and the two stations in 
the southern provinces, Chun-ju and Kunsan, the 
only ones as yet regularly occupied. In Japan I 
visited all the stations except Takamatsu, 1 where, 
at present, we have no resident missionary. 

On the ninth day of December I took passage on 
the Pacific Mail S. S. China, reaching San Fran- 
cisco on December 23d and Nashville on December 
28th. 

At every point visited, with two or three excep- 
tions, I preached to the native Christians through 
an interpreter, and also, as opportunity offered, in 
the street chapels to congregations of unbelievers; 
Everywhere the native Christians received my visit 
as an evidence of our special interest in them, and 
everywhere I was charged by them with messages 
of love and gratitude to the church at home, and 
with requests for our prayers in their behalf. 

1 Since occupied by the Revs. W. C. and W. McS. Buch- 
anan. 



Mission Woek m the Far East. 123 

Two weeks of the time given to China were occu- 
pied with the exercises of the Thirtieth Anniver- 
sary Conference of the Mission, and of the regular 
annual mission meeting, held at the same time. I 
also attended the annual meeting of the Korean 
mission held at Kunsan, and an adjourned meeting 
of the Japan mission held at Kobe. I participated 
freely in the deliberations of all these meetings, on 
the understanding that no advice or opinions I 
might express concerning matters falling under 
the jurisdiction of the missions were to be taken 
as official declarations, or to have any other weight 
than that to which their wisdom might entitle 
them. I was thus enabled to gain much valuable 
information concerning the details of the work. 
These meetings also furnished the opportunity of 
becoming personally acquainted with many of the 
missionaries who were previously known to me 
only through correspondence, and for establishing 
bonds of personal affection, which I account as 
among the most valuable of the results to be at- 
tained by my visit to them. 

So far from feeling qualified by so brief and 
hurried a visit, to speak with authority on those 
questions of method and policy concerning which 
both missionary societies at home and missionaries 
on the field have been divided in opinion, I only 
realize the more how difficult and many sided many 
of these questions are, and am more than ever con- 
vinced of the wisdom of that feature of our revised 
manual, which devolves on the missions a larger 
share of responsibility than they formerly had for 
the management of the work in the field. 

In stating certain conclusions to which I was led 
by my observation of the work, I will speak first of 
some which concern all of the three missions alike, 



124 Lights and Shadows of 

Missionary Salaries. 
In 1895 the salaries of our missionaries in the 
East were fixed on the basis of a report made by 
Eev. J. L. Stuart, in April, 1893, after a visit and 
careful investigation made by him as to the con- 
ditions and cost of living in the three fields, as 
follows : 

Single Married 

Missionaries. Couples. 

China, $500 $ 800 

Japan and Korea, 600 1,000 

Salaries in Japan have since been reduced, ac- 
cording to estimates sent from that field, to $500 
for single missionaries, and $950 for married 
couples, and in China to $450 for single mission- 
aries, and in Korea $550. These salaries are lower 
than those of any other missionaries in those fields 
receiving a fixed salary. (The China Inland Mis- 
sion, the Christian Alliance, and possibly some 
others pay a pro rata of the funds received — the 
salaries being thus contingent as to amount.) Do 
they now admit of any further reduction consist- 
ently with the idea of giving our missionaries "a 
comfortable and economical support ?" 

On the one hand, since the date of Mr. Stuart's 
report, the movement of the rate of exchange has 
been in favor of the missionaries. The Mexican 
dollar, then worth about sixty-two and a half cents, 
is now worth about forty-eight cents, and the Jap- 
anese yen, then worth seventy cents, is now worth 
fifty cents. 

On the other hand, the movement of prices, 
especially in the last two years, has been against 
them, about in the same degree, except in the in- 
terior of China. There the rise in prices has been 
steady, but less rapid than in Japan and Korea. 



Mission Work in the Far East. 125 

For example, Mr. Stuart reported silver prices of 
leading staples in 1893 as follows : Flour, $9 per 
barrel; beef, 19 cents per pound; butter, 56 to 
60 cents; soft coal, per ton, $4.50 to $6 in Japan, 
$6.50 to $8.50 in China and Korea. 

The prices of these staples at the time of my 
visit were: Flour, $13 to $16 per barrel; beef, 35 
cents to 45 cents per pound; butter, 60 cents to 65 
cents in China and Japan, 80 cents to 85 cents in 
Korea; soft coal, Japan $8 to $10, according to 
location; China, $10 to $13, according to location; 
Korea, $17, at Seoul. Prices of other staples have 
increased about in proportion to these. All the 
missions are compelled to order a considerable 
part, and the Korean mission especially a large 
part of their supplies from San Francisco. 

In Korea and some parts of China it is impossi- 
ble to know whether meat offered for sale in the 
native markets has been killed or died of disease. 
In Korea beeves are usually strangled, instead of 
butchered. Nearly all the children have to be fed 
on condensed milk, something in the climate seem- 
ing to interfere with the ordinary course of nature 
in that respect. The transport charges on these 
foreign goods constitute a heavy item of expense, 
amounting in Korea to from 30 per cent, to 40 per 
cent, on the original cost. Along with the rise of 
prices of food supplies there has been, and is now 
going on, a rise in the price of native labor. 
Woolen goods are cheap, but cotton goods and 
other things entering into the make-up of wo- 
men's outfits are costly. Most of the single women 
also find it necessary in the interest of their work, 
to keep house rather than to board. Native ideas 
of propriety also require them to have a female 
companion in travelling. For these and other rea- 



126 Lights axd Shadows of 

sons the cost of living is fully as great, if not 
greater, for single women than for single men. 

Dentistry is enormously high, in China the for- 
eign dentists at Shanghai being the only ones ac- 
cessible. In Japan there are native dentists who 
work at reasonable rates, but foreign dentists 
charge about the same as in Shanghai, and to have 
work done satisfactorily, it is necessary to employ 
foreign dentists. 

On the whole, my conclusion from all I could see 
and learn in regard to this matter is that the sal- 
aries as fixed in 1895, on the basis of Mr. Stuart's 
report, are as low as they can be made without the 
danger of subjecting our missionaries to actual 
hardship and embarrassment. My conviction is 
most decided that no reduction should be made in 
the salaries of married missionaries. 

Mission Property. 

In the matter of mission property our policy has 
always been to own as little, in foreign lands, as 
the necessities of the work would allow. I saw 
nothing that led me to doubt, but much to confirm 
my belief in the wisdom of this policy. 

In China, while the right to purchase land is 
guaranteed by treaty, the actual purchase is often 
resisted by the local officials and sometimes be- 
comes the occasion of serious trouble. In Korea 
we can gain no fee simple title to land except in a 
treaty port, and in Japan none at all. But in the 
case of missionary residences, in China the alterna- 
tive is between the danger of having trouble with, 
and perhaps temporarily aggravating the hostility 
of the natives, on the one hand, and the certainty 
of suffering from climate and environment on the 
other, In Chinese cities the dwellings, even of the 



Mission Work iist the Far East. 127 

better classes, are packed together on densely 
crowded streets, and surrounded by indescribable 
conditions of discomfort and unhealthfulness. The 
ruling idea in their architecture is the exclusion of 
sunlight and fresh air. The physical constitution 
of the Orientals seems, by the power of heredity, 
to be in some degree adjusted to these conditions. 
But in the case of Europeans and Americans the 
battle is always sooner or later a losing one. Sev- 
eral of our missionary families in China are now 
living in native houses, and in every such case 
there were one or more members of such families 
who seemed to me to be suffering in consequence of 
it. Moreover, in order to preserve the mental and 
physical condition necessary for their best work, 
in China especially, our missionaries need homes, 
to which they may periodically retire, and find rest 
from the nerve strain produced by the ceaseless 
pressure of curious, unsympathetic, and hostile 
crowds. 

In Korea, and in the part of the country occu- 
pied by our mission especially, it may be said in 
general that there are no native houses, but only 
huts, with mud walls and thatched roofs and 
rooms the size of our dressing rooms and closets. 
Japanese houses and the conditions surrounding 
them are better than those of China and Korea, 
but their walls are all sliding partitions which 
cannot be made tight enough to afford adequate 
protection from the winter climate. Leases of 
ground may be made in Japan for periods of 
twenty (20) years or more. The rents paid for a 
native house for ten years will ordinarily be suffi- 
cient to build a comfortable foreign style dwelling. 
My conviction is, therefore, that in all those fields 
our missionaries should be encouraged to obtain 



128 Lights and Shadows otf 

land, with such security of tenure as the case ad- 
mits of, and build their own dwellings, rather than 
to risk life or health in attempting to live in na- 
tive houses. 

On the other hand, no matter how much our in- 
come may be increased, I trust that no large pro- 
portion of it will go into the mission buildings of 
which I saw so many in the East, planned on a 
scale which the native church can never hope to' 
rival, producing the impression of unlimited 
wealth at the disposal of the missions that build 
them, and thus tending to discourage rather than 
to stimulate native effort. 

Self-Support. 

For some years past there has been an effort, 
more or less united, on the part of the missions 
and the societies at home to introduce into the 
work more largely than heretofore, the principle 
of self-support. I am glad to report that our mis- 
sions are among the most strenuous supporters of 
this policy, in all the eastern fields. Our China 
mission has been noted from the beginning for the 
economy with which its work in conducted, which 
fact was more than once mentioned to its praise 
by members of other missions who took part in 
our Anniversary Conference. By pursuing a dif- 
ferent policy they could have had more visible re- 
sults of their work to show at the present time; 
but the foundations they have been laying would 
have been less solid and enduring; and they can 
now look forward to a brighter and happier future 
than if they had sought to force a more rapid de- 
velopment by the lavish use of money. 

In Japan, where the opposite policy has been 
pursued by all the missions, more than elsewhere, 



Mission Work in the Far East. 129 

the zeal of our mission in the policy of self-sup- 
port has brought its members in some places into 
more or less strained relations with leaders of the * 
native church. It is too much to expect of these 
that they should see the matter from our stand- 
point, and the problem of changing from the old 
to the new plan is one that requires to be handled 
with great tact and delicacy. But in my judgment 
the change is vital to the future purity and power 
of the church, and those who are working to that 
end should receive the earnest sympathy and co- 
operation of their home societies and boards. With 
such co-operation, the success of the movement in 
behalf of self-support in Japan is already assured. 
Our Korean work is being conducted from the 
beginning on the "Nevius Plan" of self-support, 
and the native Christians there have not learned, 
and it is to be hoped, will never learn, that there 
is any other plan. 

Medical Work. 

I was impressed by all I saw of our medical mis- 
sion work, with its exceeding value and import- 
ance. But so much depends on the work being 
done in the best way, that only those should be 
sent as medical missionaries who have had the best 
training our schools afford, supplemented by some 
hospital experience. They should also have a full 
and thorough equipment for surgical work. The 
amount of $200 allowed by our manual for medical 
outfit is insufficient for this purpose. It is the 
judgment of all our medical missionaries with 
whom I consulted that this amount should be at 
least doubled. The dispensary work is valuable, 
but does not furnish the opportunity which is so 
desirable for spiritual work in connection with the 



130 Lights and Shadows of 

medical work. For this purpose it is necessary 
that they be furnished with adequate facilities for 
treating "in patients," which none of them now 
have except Dr. Wilkinson, at Soochow. It is not 
the policy of the committee, nor of our missions, 
to invest Foreign Mission funds in the building of 
large hospitals. But in order to success of the 
work, and to securing the best spiritual results 
from it, the effort should be made to supply each 
medical missionary, as soon as possible, with means 
to build some inexpensive rooms where difficult 
cases can be properly treated and cared for, and 
where the missionary evangelist can have the op- 
portunity of reaching them. 

It was also a common complaint in the hospitals 
I visited that their evangelistic force was insuffi- 
cient to follow up the work so as to secure the 
largest and best results from it. I think that in 
the future development of our medical work we 
should look well to this point. The tendency of 
all "institutional" mission work is to localization, 
whereas, it seems to me, such work, under the 
present conditions of the mission problem, is only 
justifiable when it is so managed that the institu- 
tion becomes a center of radiation. 

China. 

Notwithstanding the many and great difficulties 
that encompass the work in China, in most of the 
places occupied by our workers, encouraging prog- 
ress is being made. If I should offer any criticism 
of our past policy in that field, it would be that 
there has all along been too much scattering of the 
forces. Stations have been opened faster than we 
have been able to man them for effective work, 
with the results that new missionaries have often 
been pushed into places of responsibility before 



Mission Woek m the Fab East. 131 

they were prepared for it by a mastery of the lan- 
guage, and the work of itinerating the country has 
suffered. 

Most of our centers are in the large cities, 
where it is necessary, for many reasons, that they 
should be. But good strategy would seem to re- 
quire that special emphasis be placed on work in 
the country, because there is at present the point of 
least resistance, and because among the farmers in 
the country villages there is to be found a more 
hopeful element out of which to gather self-sup- 
porting and aggressive churches than that which 
is mainly accessible to us in the cities. To carry 
on effective country work from a center in the city, 
requires at least three men, besides the necessary 
provision for women's work. There are only three 
of our China stations having that number of men 
who have been in the field long enough t© do regu- 
lar work. I would therefore recommend that the 
committee veto the opening of any more stations 
in China until all those now occupied have been 
properly manned. 

Japan. 

The missionary situation in Japan is in some 
respects critical, and contains many elements re- 
quiring wisdom and forbearance in those who have 
to deal with it. The spirituality of the native 
church has suffered from the political ferment the 
country has been in during and since the war with 
China, and from the influences that have come to it 
in connection with the opening of foreign trade. 
Its orthodoxy has suffered from the elimination 
of the reformed symbols from the creed of the 
Church of Christ in Japan, and from the importa- 
tion from this country and from Europe of ration- 
alistic views., especially concerning the word of 



132 Lights and Shadows of 

God and the doctrine of the atonement. Its activ- 
ity has been lessened by the too large use of foreign 
money in the employment of native workers. On 
the other hand, I had the pleasure of meeting 
many members of the native church who impressed 
me as being sound, earnest and praying men, as 
well as men of character and ability. The estab- 
lishment of a church of which this can be said, is 
one of the successes, and not one of the failures of 
mission work, and its future may be looked forward 
to with encouragement and hope. 

I think it is now generally recognized that, in 
Japan, mission work in general, and as a conse- 
quence, that of the Japanese church which has 
grown out of it, is subject to the criticism of 
having been too much confined to one class of the 
people. When the feudal system was overthrown, 
the feudal retainers, known as "Samurai," found 
themselves in the new order of things without a 
reason of existence. This event, happening just 
before the country was opened to mission work, 
furnished the opportunity of reaching this class, 
which proved readily accessible, and out of it the 
present membership of the churches has been 
largely gathered. The present most urgent need 
is the evangelization of the lower classes. And 
this is a work which a ministry drawn mainly 
from the Samurai class, because of the strong class 
spirit in all Oriental countries, and for many other 
reasons, cannot reasonably be expected to push 
with the energy and sympathy necessary to success. 

For this purpose an increased number of foreign 
missionaries is needed, until a native ministry 
drawn from the lower classes can be raised up. 
Missionaries for Japan, however, should be selected 
with greatest care. They should if possible be 
tried men — men with some degree of maturity, ex- 
perience, and approved wisdom. * * * 



Mission Work in the Far East. 133 

Korea. 

Apart from some ominous clouds on the politi- 
cal horizon, the whole missionary situation in Ko- 
rea is cheering in the highest degree. The people 
are much less anti-foreign than other Orientals. 
Their friendship is readily won by kind treatment. 
The Presbyterian missions working in co-opera- 
tion there are unanimous in support of the self- 
supporting policy, and consequently there is no 
difficulty in carrying on the work on that basis. 
What competent observers have pronounced to be 
the most interesting and successful mission work 
now being done in the world is that of the North- 
ern Presbyterians in the province of Pyeng-Yang. 
The work of our mission in the southern provinces, 
as yet only two years old, is already yielding re- 
sults in hopeful conversions and in large numbers 
of inquirers and adherents. * * * There are 
few large cities, the people living mostly in vil- 
lages, rendering them more easy of access, and 
more susceptible of being influenced. If the field 
could be at once supplied with a sufficient number 
of workers, the church might soon have the joy 
of seeing the whole nation evangelized. This re- 
suit can be achieved much more easily before than 
after the advent of western civilizatian. Unedu- 
cated Buddhism and Confucianism are much less 
formidable foes than educated atheism. 

Political troubles may also complicate the situa- 
tion in the future. Now the way is open for al- 
most unhindered gospel work. While in Korea I 
was continually reminded of the Saviour's words 
concerning the white fields and the waiting har- 
vest, and I could not help from coveting the privi- 
lege offered to those to whom God has given the 
means that would enable them to say to us, "Find 
the men who are willing to go and do this work, 
and we will provide their support." 



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